↪boethius, losing out in Ukraine wouldn't destroy Russia, though it might be detrimental to Putin. Starting a nuclear war on the other hand... — jorndoe

That's why I literally say:

Obviously there are costs to using nuclear weapons, but faced with total destruction (in this case of the Russian government or "regime" or whatever you want to call it) then any tool that avoids that is a preferable option. — boethius

I say "in this case of the Russian government or "regime" or whatever you want to call it" as military defeat could spiral into civil unrest and unravelling of the economy (people in the streets rather than dealing with supply line disruption of the sanctions).

Likely, in such a scenario, the Russian decision makers (certainly Putin, maybe others as well) would conclude that using nukes on Ukraine to "stabilise" the situation is the pathway that leads to the least use of nuclear weapons. Better to nuke a few military formations and assets than the unravelling of the Russian government and nuclear armed warlords nuking whole cities. Whether that would happen or not, that would certainly be the argument of the pro-nuking debaters in such a meeting: that not-doing-the-thing leads to more of that very thing. I.e. by nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki we are in fact saving lives. Of course, can be debated both ways.

Now, how effective the full compliment of applicable NATO weapons would be in the battle space at the start of the war I'm not sure (maybe Russian anti-air missiles can shoot down F-16s on mass, Western tanks would not make much difference etc., and maybe Russia could even shoot down F-35 if that was possible to supply, train and support, or maybe they would not have been able to deal with advanced NATO weapons, or then maybe they could but the Russians run out of missiles etc.), so it's not a given that more weapons to Ukraine would have made a major difference. Advanced weapons take a long time to train on to become proficient and then more time to integrate those systems into a battle doctrine, unlike handheld missiles, so would have depended on what the limiting factors were for Ukraine at the start of the war. It's entirely possible that scrounging up and throwing in as much old soviet equipment as possible was the only effective strategy for NATO and tanks and planes are more symbols than potential game changers at any point in the conflict.

What is certain is that NATO decided very deliberately to not come close to testing that scenario because Russia could respond with nuclear weapons if it works. If it doesn't work then it's bad PR for Western military equipment (at this stage of the war there's plenty of excuses that the Ukrainians are tired, the Russians laid down all these mines and have air cover etc. -- excuses that would work less well at the start of the conflict): point being it's a lose-lose situation making an honest attempt to support Ukraine defeating Russia on the conventional battle field. What's a win for the US is subjugating Europe and sacrificing Ukrainians to do so.

Why likely would? It would seem rather spiteful, certainly not good for Russia(ns). Making it a nuclear war over a fifth of Ukraine (or however much would be left) suggests that the world (not just that area) has a markedly larger problem with the Kremlin, something in need of attention now (politically, tactically/strategically, militarily). — jorndoe

In terms of domestically and international politics, had NATO truly done "what it takes" and given Ukraine all manner of military equipment Ukraine could possibly want or need, started training on F16s and a thousand tanks and every sort of missile, and hell, why not F-35 and F-22's while we're "doing what it takes" and so on, then Russia could easily say they are fighting NATO, de facto attacked by NATO and so they're using nuclear weapons. So the optics would be "nuclear favourable".

Furthermore, if supplying all these advanced weapons to Ukraine resulted in major battlefield victories and Russia was losing, then the choice would essentially be between massive civil unrest and potential collapse of the economy and government or to use nuclear weapons to stabilise the situation.

Obviously there are costs to using nuclear weapons, but faced with total destruction (in this case of the Russian government or "regime" or whatever you want to call it) then any tool that avoids that is a preferable option.

Therefore, as long as Ukraine can be defeated with conventional means and, more importantly, has no chance of defeating Russia, then the costs of using nuclear weapons outweigh the benefits. Since NATO doesn't want Russia to use nuclear weapons as it has no response, hence NATO basically introduces one weapons system at a time so that Russia can easily adapt and overcome.

This typically could be covered by the trade surplus (i.e. if what Russia sold for foreign currencies was still more than it bought for them), but this has been also shrinking rather dramatically and it is now headed toward deficit. — Jabberwock

In other words, you agree with my analysis and the depreciation of the Rubble is not a problem, may even boost Russian exports and thus help that trade deficit problem ...

What is for certain is that the Russian central bank letting the Rubble float is not going to cause some imminent economic catastrophe.

Crash of the Rubble definitely could have been highly disruptive and caused such a economic and social unravelling at the start of the sanctions, but Russias central bank had plenty foreign currency reserves to support the Rubble.

For those wondering, the practical effect of the sanctions is massive supply chain disruption and so there's plenty of Russian businesses who have Rubbles in the bank and need to find alternative import substitutes for things that simply don't exist in Russia (ultimately exchanging Rubbles for whatever currency they need to buy whatever imports they require from somewhere else). Had the Rubble collapsed these businesses would have simply immediately failed causing further supply chain disruption and the entire economy could have unravelled.

By supporting the Rubble, the Russian central bank was basically underwriting (de facto subsidising) Russian business finding alternative supply chains and sorting things out.

Now that supply chains have been "reoriented" a fall in the Rubble actually boosts exports as now everything is cheaper for foreign buyers.

Generally speaking, all these macro economic moves have winners and losers and if it's good or bad and for who depends on a bunch of specifics. For example, if the government prints money to spend on social programs, that's basically just taxing the middle class to transfer wealth to the poor and invest in education and health and other things that ultimately benefit everything. If the governments prints money to "monetise" banker bets that went bad, that's taxing the middle and even lower classes to transfer wealth to the banks to further capture the political system.

what leaves out from his commentary on the Rubble exchange rate is:

First, the energy contracts Russia insisted on Rubble payments was to "unfriendly countries"

Vladimir Putin has demanded payment in roubles for Russian gas sold to “unfriendly” countries, setting a deadline of 31 March. — The Guardian Explainer

This was not done to:

Also last year, to strengthen its currency against sanctions, Russia decided to renegotiate some of its export deals to be nominated in rubles. — Jabberwock

But was done mainly for political reasons of forcing Europe to make exceptions to sanctions and making countries who need the gas contradict their rhetoric; essentially playing the "push comes to shove game".

With the oil, the international market quickly adjusted to Western sanctions as long as Russia can sell somewhere, as oil is primarily transported by ships which can go pretty much anywhere in the world without significant extra costs. To make a long story short, international oil flows quickly adjust to changes in buyers and sellers.

International gas flows are far less flexible in any short period of time and so there are far bigger consequences to cut off supplies either by choice or by pipelines being blown up.

What @Jabberwock also leaves out is that even these contracts where the payment is in Rubbles, the price is not actually denominated in Rubbles but still in Euro or USD and what changed was the buyer needed to do the exchange into Rubbles rather than Gazprom or the Russian central bank. There is not really any economic difference in making the buyer make the exchange into Rubbles or the seller. The difference in this case was that insisting unconverted funds could potentially be stranded if payments were made to Gazprom subsidiaries who then, due to sanctions, could not move the money, but, in my opinion, the move was mostly symbolic of making countries "bend the knee" and buy Rubbles in contradiction to their public positions.

However, the price of the gas is not denominated in Rubbles so these countries will just be buying more rubbles.

Point is @Jabberwock has no clue what he's talking about, and even ignoring the gas, Russia has plenty of foreign reserves, gold and sells plenty of Oil in other currencies that the depreciation of the Rubble has zero relevance to Russia's ability to import electronics for arms manufacturing.

Rather, a low Rubble boosts Russian exports of manufactured goods.

For years, the West complained about China manipulating it's currency ... in which direction?

Lower!!

The accusation has been China keeps it's currency undervalued in order to boost it's exports.

Currency depreciation is only a major problem if you don't export anything.

As long as you're exporting, then you're getting foreign exchange that can be used to purchase whatever critical imports you need and your domestic currency can constantly inflate (which is basically a form of tax) and there's no issue (to the government and the wealthy who get the forex).

Case in point, Sri Lanka's economy unravelled because it's major export was tourism and then with Covid there was no more tourism, so Sri Lanka suddenly had no foreign exchange coming into the country but still has critical imports it needs to buy.

Things start to go bad when traders notice this and start to bet against the Sri Lankan economy in every way possible, further devaluing their domestic currency and forcing the central bank to spend foreign reserves to try to keep things from crashing altogether while a solution is hopefully found (such as an IMF loan to kick the can down the road or then tourism restarting in Sri Lanka's case), but then things crash completely when those foreign reserves run out and the central banks only option is to to to buy critically needed foreign cash in domestic currency, resulting in hyper inflation and the collapse of the government, as no one wants Sri Lankan money so you'd need to offer a ridiculous amount to buy any foreign money.

This doesn't happen as long as you can export.

If you're able to get into the country foreign exchange (which basically all goes to the central bank) through exports then you can by definition buy whatever critical imports you need with the foreign exchange you get through said exports.

You can then print as much as money as you want as a form of taxation and a form of national "sale" to foreign buyers of manufactured goods that are denominated in Rubbles. For example, if you're a Russian business and you sell farming equipment both in Russian and to foreign buyers and all your costs are in Rubbles, then there's not really an immediate affect of a change in the Rubble exchange rate ... in fact you're happy if the Rubble goes down as you're going to make more sales; you've basically been able to offer all your foreign buyers a discount without any of your cost structure or profits changing.

Normal poor people who mostly buy food (which Russia produces) and energy (which Russia produces) and maybe some fixed costs like rent, won't feel the effects of this currency depreciation either.

Who's affected is the middle class who don't own a business exporting anything and want to buy a phone or whatever on the foreign market or want to go on vacation somewhere, now it costs a lot more.

Which is why this form of inflation is in no way an economic problem for Russia and is just a massive tax on the Russian middle class.

The reason Russia manipulated it's currency to stay high until now (which the Russian central bank could easily keep doing if it wanted) is that there was propaganda value in doing that and keeping the currency stable to work out the effects of sanctions provided domestic "confidence" (so people stay in business and can work out alternative supply chains and so on).

However, the reasons for the central bank to support the Rubble are short term and once those reasons go away, any economist will recommend "price discovery" of what the fair value of the Rubble is on the international market.

Currencies depreciate on foreign exchanges or inflate (leading to the same thing) all the time without that being some problem.

It was a problem for Sri Lanka because the central bank ran out of foreign exchange, but in the case of Russia, the Russian central bank has plenty of foreign exchange reserves, plenty mineral reserves, can easily get more, and also basically doesn't have any loans equal to or exceeding its GDP with interest payment denominated in foreign currency (which is what fucks up small, fragile developing world economies).

Another way to put things in perspective is:

The inflation rate in India between 1958 and 2022 was 8,808.16%, which translates into a total increase of $8,808.16. This means that 100 rupees in 1958 are equivalent to 8,908.16 rupees in 2022. In other words, the purchasing power of $100 in 1958 equals $8,908.16 in 2022. The average annual inflation rate between these periods was 7.27%. — Rupee Inflation Calculator

And yet, India's economy has grown significantly and is considered a major international player.

Continuous inflation and artificially devaluing your currency on the international market on-top of inflation is a standard national economic strategy that the West continuously complains about as providing competitive advantage.

There is zero reason to assume this is not also true for Russia.

Of course, there are winners and losers in inflationary policy but neo-liberal economists can go on for quite some time on how everyone basically wins in the end, poverty vanquished etc.

So, at minimum, it's highly ironic and annoying that the Western press who employ neo-liberal economists to comment on everything else are suddenly pointing to currency devaluation as some sort of blow to Russia.

Looks like Bayer agrees with boethius, sort of, in a way, partially... — jorndoe

Thanks for adding "sort of", but, yes, it is obvious even to staunch supporters of the war that Ukraine doesn't get "whatever it takes".

However, we are long past the moment where no-limits weapons supplies would make a major difference to the war.

Not that I would have supported such a policy when the war started or lament now the path not taken, as Russia could and likely would respond with nuclear weapons ... exactly why the policy has been to drip feed Ukraine weapons in a progressive and controlled manner that Russia can deal with without panicking (aka. win).

We care about Ukrainian sovereignty, but not enough to die for it. Sending weapons has the advantage of us not dying. — Jabberwock

Ok, thanks for just spelling out the obvious nature of the position, that the West's position is that Ukrainian sovereignty is not worth dying for (to us), and not deflecting with accusations of "framing" or whatever or then jumping over this important premise directly to:

Ukrainians, on the other hand, do want to die for Ukrainian sovereignty, possibly because it is their own sovereignty. I would say it is rather uncomplicated. — Jabberwock

Now, if free and prosperous Ukraine still had elections, maybe you could plausibly say the policies are what "Ukrainians" want.

Likewise, if men were allowed to leave the country and weren't forced into fighting, maybe you could say they "want" to fight, because they aren't leaving.

But, please explain the simple answers to these issues, as it's all uncomplicated to you.

Likewise, let's assume you are correct and "Ukraine wants to fight", and lets say we (the arms suppliers) know Ukraine will lose the war at immense cost, death and suffering.

Should we still send arms even if we knew Ukraine is very likely to lose anyways?

Because you also say in your uncomplicated world view that you don't need a theory of victory, so is Ukraine losing at the cost of a million Ukrainian lives worthwhile?

I would say the amount of arms sent is not a result of deliberate anything — Jabberwock

You sweet summer child, like a leaf blown along the winds of hope without a care in the world.

Honestly seems nice to be that naive, but let us continue for the sake of argument.

it is the woeful result of the state of Western politics, which is ruled strictly by popularity, therefore politicians instead of making up their minds try to please everyone, so that we have the exact situation of 'helping the effort, but not too much'. — Jabberwock

Ok, well, if this "woeful" state of Western politics results in Ukraine losing the war at a massive cost of lives and suffering, are you saying the "woeful" support was justified nonetheless, or are you actually against the current policy, preferring sending no arms rather than insufficient support (which may not be achievable at all with only arms shipments but may require sending actual soldiers)?

the support for the effort was greater in the West (like it is e.g. in the Baltics, former Eastern Bloc countries and Finland), then the war would be long over with. — Jabberwock

Extremely doubtful, unless you're talking sending in troops, which, as you note:

We care about Ukrainian sovereignty, but not enough to die for it. — Jabberwock

So I assume you aren't.

But, we agree that the support isn't at the level of the former Eastern block, Baltics and Finland so seems a moot point.

OK, let us bring up the expected consequences of not helping Ukrainians at all. I tried to bring it up with Isaac, but to no avail. — Jabberwock

We've gone through the alternative many, many times with previous interlocutors. I haven't read all the posts since my haitus here so I'm going to assume @Isaac did in fact answer you sufficiently, or then just dealing with your continuous deflection, but I can summarise the alternative:

First, not-helping Ukraine at all other than humanitarian aid the West can arguably be said to provide universally (or then makes an honest attempt, such as Médecins Sans Frontières) isn't a moral catastrophe. There's plenty of wars all over the place, not to mention those in which the West is the aggressor, in which we do not "help".

So not helping Ukraine would be the less hypocritical, and therefore more honest and more moral position.

Nevertheless, the alternative to arms shipments is diplomacy based on the honest position that we're not willing to die for this cause and there's zero evidence sending arms to Ukraine will result in a better outcome for Ukraine or anyone else (that the only hopium-light reason to do so is a cynical expenditure of Ukrainian bodies, "fight to the last Ukrainian", for debatable, and arguably counter-productive, geopolitical ambitions), but we (the West, and in particular Europe) may have things both Russia and Ukraine want that can help end the conflict.

Of course negotiating a resolution to the conflict requires both compromise and risk.

So, if you're opposed to either compromise or any risk (obviously only diplomatically and not the risk of warfare which you are perfectly content with) on principle then we should debate that first.

You seem to take it for granted that Ukrainians continuing to fight "to victory" (while also not requiring a theory of victory of how that happens) is the only reasonable option.

Are you against a negotiated resolution?

You guys work yourselves up into a righteous moral frenzy about Ukrainian sovereignty, and then when I mention the option of raising the flag, beating the drums, rolling the fully upgraded tanks, sending in the troops, and ask why that doesn't follow from your moral position the answer is always:

1. Oh, it's Ukrainians who want to fight, not us:

We decided that we do not want to fight, Ukrainians have decided that they do - all they ask for is help. — Jabberwock

So, ok, it's not our issue, why do we care again?

If we don't want to fight, why do we want to send arms? What's this moral theory about sending arms regardless of the consequences sending arms has is the moral thing to do? Feel free to explain.

2. How dare you ask us to explain ourselves!!!

The usual intellectually miserable tactic of framing opponents’ views. — neomac

Ok, well, un-frame it for me.

In what moral theory is there a cause not worth risking much of anything yourself but is like "totally so important"? Worth sending arms ... but not too many arms!!!

Why would they be 'manipulated' about the Western help, if the West in the beginning of the war flatly refused to supply them with tanks, planes and long-range artillery? — Jabberwock

There's this delicate balance right in the middle of sending the "just right" bowl of arms that seems to aim for maximising Ukrainian dead, but at the same time it's presented as some obvious idea and anyone who's critical is "helping the enemy" who we're not actually at war with.

Absolutely nothing is obvious about this idea and every time the consequences are brought up, instead of accepting the consequences as a consequence of this idea suddenly the West isn't moral agents at all and it's Ukrainians doing all the fighting and choosing and it's their choice and we aren't to question that choice no matter how irrational it seems, but somehow sending arms isn't our choice but just obvious thing to do.

The usual intellectually miserable tactic of framing opponents’ views. Apparently, on matter of facts we can’t prove anything, if we happen to believe anything is because of Western propaganda, what they believe is clearly not propaganda though (even if, on the other side, all narratives are claimed to be all plausible interpretations), on matter of moral we are either coward or cynical (is that yet another interpretation? or The Facts™?). — neomac

What does your comment have to do with my comment?

Are you disputing the fact that other Western countries, and also all the other countries, have not sent their soldiers into Ukraine?

Or are you arguing sending arms to Ukraine is brave? That's what a "brave" country would do, send arms instead of their own soldiers.

Feel free to have at it: You / the Western legacy media / NATO says Ukrainian sovereignty is a moral imperative to uphold ... just not without sending themselves or their own soldiers. If Ukrainian sovereignty is so important, why is it not worth risking our own soldiers lives to see it preserved?

He was advocating refusing military help to Ukraine which would most likely result in Ukraine's loss of further lands and quite likely its independence. I think it is pretty much 'giving away further parts of Ukraine'. — Jabberwock

It is totally different.

There is no moral imperative to supply arms.

And don't move the goal posts from "free and prosperous" to "independent".

I do not need a theory, because it has already happened: Ukraine already IS more free than it would be if it was subjugated by Russia, which would likely happen if the help was denied. — Jabberwock

Really? Is "no further elections" your definition of freedom?

Notice also that your "I don't need a theory of victory" is a theory of victory: that Ukraine is "winning", at least in the freedom sense so far, and your theory here is that it will continue to be this free and prosperous if the status quo of arms shipments is maintained.

But that's not in anyway guaranteed. Even if I were to accept that Ukraine is "more free" so far, that doesn't somehow imply it will continue to be even the current level of freedom compared to losing the war.

Notice also that you simply ignore all not-free Ukrainians in the process so far because they are dead.

And I am not sure why you are treating Ukrainians as fools who do not know better. — Jabberwock

It's called "war optimism".

Here's an example:

They have not done that because they were not ready. And yes, it will take tens of thousands of lives and yes, it could still fail. Still, it is the best manuever at this time.

And it will not be 'exposed salient' - if the land bridge falls, then most likely the Kherson oblast falls as well, Russians will not be able to supply the area just from Crimea. Ukrainians would be exposed only on the 80 km section from Vuhledar to Mariupol - the rest would be protected by the very same defence lines which Russians cannot breach for a year. 'Cutting from North' would be essentially repeating attacks around Vuhledar - we know how well those went. And supplies would be no problem - they would still have Zaporozhe behind them, as they do now. It is Russians who are in vulnerable position there - they have 150 km to defend with their backs to the sea and only 80 km of depth. — Jabberwock

How'd that "best manuever at this time" turn out?

Why would they be 'manipulated' about the Western help, if the West in the beginning of the war flatly refused to supply them with tanks, planes and long-range artillery? — Jabberwock

So you agree we're manipulating them with false promises?

... Just that it's ok manipulation because they know we're manipulating?

They have made the choice to defend their independence (i.e. to risk death) BEFORE any Western help was promised, in fact, the West was quite resigned that they will lose the war quickly. — Jabberwock

"They" meaning all of Ukraine?

"Risk death" as in commit to fight and be wiling to die regardless of the chances of victory?

No need to move anywhere, just ask: by your own words free and prosperous Ukraine is a grave threat to his regime. We know that he is willing to go to war to defend against threats, so it is reasonable that he would keep threatening war until there was no chance of free and prosperous Ukraine. As you are claiming that avoiding the war is better than letting people get under oppression, you would advocate letting him subjugate the whole of Ukraine if it meant war could be avoided. We also know that he is interested in Ukrainian territories and is willing to risk war to get them, therefore we can assume that he might want more Ukrainian territories. Again, you would rather give away Ukrainian territories to avoid war, therefore you would advocate giving away further parts of Ukraine, until it run out of parts. — Jabberwock

This is your problem, you are talking in complete abstractions of what's preferable.

Neither @Isaac nor the whole of the UK where he lives, or me and the country where I live, or NATO or the whole of the EU, has a choice in front of us of "giving away further parts of Ukraine".

We do not own or control it to begin with.

You are trying to turn a false choice that does not exist into simply justifying the current Western policy of pouring arms into Ukraine.

The first choice of @Isaac and myself and other non-Ukrainians (insofar as he affects the policy of their country) is are we willing to send soldiers into Ukraine to defend it against Russia?

Now, the UK, where I live in Scandinavia, the whole of NATO, EU, not to mention other countries, have repeatedly and unequivocally made clear the position that we aren't going to be sending our soldiers into Ukraine to defend shit.

Why? Well, Ukraine is not an ally, never has been, and Ukraine (according to all these countries that have not sent soldiers) is not worth defending.

That is the policy.

Do we wish that Ukraine was free and prosperous? sure, why not?

But we aren't willing to send any of soldiers to go make that happen by force, which is the key point.

Now, seen as everyone agrees Ukraine is not worth spilling their own countries blood to defend (at least anyone who actually affects policy), the key question is whether the policy of sending arms instead is a morally justifiable in lieux of our cowardice or then a smart geopolitical move to cynically use Ukrainians to harm Russia, and if the whole of Ukraine needs to be sacrificed to do so that's just "gainz" on the geopolitical chess board.

For, you're missing the other alternative in your "free vs oppression" choice which is "they dead".

Even with pouring in arms (at a drip feed pace, only introducing the next weapons system when all the previous systems fail in their promise), Ukraine may not be able to win this war.

Is it morally justifiable to send them on a fools errand that results in them dying in huge numbers based on a series of false promises (i.e. lies and manipulation) that we're going to "do whatever it takes" and "provide whatever they need"?

If that's not morally justifiable, then you need some theory of victory that actually leads to your free and prosperous Ukraine (that also takes into account that elections have been cancelled).

You cannot structure an argument as "I prefer A and therefore support any violence that is claimed to achieve A ... someday".

I've been away for a couple of weeks, but below is a saved post I didn't finish writing.

Considering Prigozhin seems still alive and seems to have even met with Putin in person, I find it really difficult to believe this was a genuine coup attempt.

Has it disbanded? — ssu

It's effectively disbanded, ordered to either join the regular military, go to Belarus or go home.

Now, if "the spirit of Wagner endures" in Belarus; sure, seems it will, but it has been effectively disbanded as far as the coup is concerned.

So why on Earth the weak timid response then from Putin and the references to 1917 and civil war? How many Russian politicians backed Putin when Wagner was marching toward Moscow? I myself don’t know that, so it’s an important question. — ssu

Maybe because it is theatre.

Why would Putin require an overwhelming show of strength if the coup is fake?

Now, if it is fake the purpose was clearly to get "buy in" with fake war of words and fake airplane and helicopter shoot downs (which are pretty easy to fake, especially if you control the whole environment).

However, we agree these details of who was backing who are obviously important for the analysis.

You seem to have the attitude of ”Everything is fine, there’s nothing to see, the Russian leadership has everything in control” as it obviously hasn’t got everything in control. Then when Wagner is truly disbanded and Prigozhin dead or in jail, then things are ”under control”. — ssu

I've made it clear I am not trying to "prove" it was fake,.

What you say is possible.

The answer to "why didn't FSB know about this ... oh, they did know about this ... and it was such an easy operation to penetrate that UK intelligence knew about it too ... ok, why didn't FSB just go arrest or kill Prigozhin the day before?"

Can just be Putin is so weak the FSB knows and does nothing about people plotting coups.

And, generally, the answer to every question would be "Putin's weak" in the case the coup was real but then aborted ... well too weak to punish the coup plotters and mutineers and intelligence that did nothing, but still strong enough to survive the coup.

And the answer to every question if the coup is fake is that it's just theatre and they are all working together.

They need to make Putin look weak to sell the coup, so they are willing to pay that price for the benefits (or perceived benefits) of staging the coup. They may simply have shows of strength planned to repair Putin's reputation or then may do nothing on the basis it doesn't matter or then "real strength" can stay quiet and is in fact more intimidating that way.

What we can agree on is that the whole series of events doesn't make a whole lot of sense and has lot's of discrepancies that would any theory would need to account for.

"The coup is real" will account for those discrepancies with Putin is weak, Prigozhin was just trying to get a better deal basically by threatening chaos and could do this because Putin is weak and /or maybe there was a pathway to a real coup (army and civilians spontaneously backing him) but that didn't work so Prigozhin cut his losses and cut a deal.

The "coup is fake" is going to explain any discrepancies as necessary to sell the coup.

Of course, whenever there are confusing events the idea it was all orchestrated neatly fits the data and has an inherent intellectual attraction. However, that the situation simply was really confusing fits the data too, there's just by definition no neat cause and effect chains that can be created.

So, in this light, the strongest evidence it was fake is

1. The timing: Prigozhin launches his coup (or "armed protest") right after Ukraine announces a delay in their offensive. There is therefore minimum risk to Russian frontline forces (no large ongoing battles threatening a break through), which therefore minimises Prigozhin leverage. Likewise, that the coup is resolved so quickly again minimises actual military risk, as it takes more than 24hrs for Ukraine to plan, launch, advance and start applying real pressure of a breakthrough. The coup timing turns out to be perfect in triggering Ukrainians to renew their offensive while, "just so happens", minimising the actual military risk.

2. The resolution: Prigozhin agrees to go to Belarus. No one in their right mind who actually just embarrassed Putin and Russia's military and intelligence agencies on the world stage would accept going to Belarus in a deal. So, in the theory that Prigozhin was just "negotiating" or then "cutting losses" in a real failed coup after failing to build the momentum, the rational deal would be to try to get to a legitimately neutral country.

The supporting evidence that supports this key evidence would be:

a. The coup starts 1000km away from Moscow without any coup elements whatsoever within Moscow. If you were plotting a classic coup you would have elements in Moscow to kill or take some symbolic buildings, or just cause general chaos.

b. As far as I know there is no combat footage of this coup that isn't easily faked. For example, planes can be easily controlled by remote control, so if you wanted to get Western media buy-in that it's a real coup then downing a plane seems pretty cheap.

c. The military plan makes zero sense. We're supposed to believe that Prigozhin is some mastermind military commander but also just launches a coup without any possibility of military success.

e. Prigozhin not only gives interviews (at least one), overjoyed, after the coup has already ended and he's leaving in an SUV but also makes cryptic remarks that moral has been boosted, it was all part of the plan, brilliant strategy of some guy ... rather than fearing for his life that he's just embarrassed Putin and Putin will certainly want him dead.

f. Ukraine does attack so if that was the goal (which if you are Russia you definitely want Ukraine to attack to be able to capitalise on all your defensive investments) then that goal is achieved. Not only does Ukraine renew its offensive but there has been no evidence of any decrease in Readiness of the Russian side as one would expect in the event of a real coup.

Well, Yeltsin needed only to climb on an IFV and give a speech. And then all those milloin of troops (then, actually million) and their official leaders couldn’t do anything. — ssu

Prigozhin isn't a politician with a constituency and has zero official command of anything that would be important for a coup, such as a military district or in charge of an intelligence agency.

There's zero evidence that Prigozhin has any backers in any position of power at all (except for Putin who he was on personal speaking terms with up to a week before this coup occurred).

Literally zero of the conditions that are necessary for an actual coup existed here.

Prigozhin makes no call for action, is clear he is not challenging Putin himself, of anyone and has zero demands (other than to "talk" with the top brass). And because he has literally zero answers to normal coup questions, he starts calling it a "march for justice" to simply form the narrative without answering any of those questions. Finally, it was simply an "armed protest".

Most importantly, Prigozhin isn't going anywhere remotely neutral and out of Putin's reach. So now that the coup is ended, Wagner effectively disbanded, if Putin was actually so embarrassed and shown to be weak etc. would he just have Prigozhin and any other ring leader killed over night.

If he kidnapped high ranking people and then negotiated a billion dollars and safe passage to some neutral country that guarantees his safety ... ok, it would at least look like some high stakes extortion and I'd consider it at least plausible that maybe Prigozhin thought he was about to be murdered anyways and this stunt of threatening chaos behind the lines was his best bet of saving his own skin. But he's going to Belarus ... where the leader is a Russian colonel and is covered with FSB and Russian military personnel. It's pretty much the same as going to any Russian province; in anyway that matters exactly the same as negotiating with Kardiyov and then going to Chechnya to live in peace and quiet while Putin "fumes" about this embarrassing insubordination.

It really doesn't matter if it wasn't a coup (which also some Russian nationalist commentators believe it was). Prigozhin came close to Moscow (after seizing Rostov) armed, ready to kill and with hostile demands against the establishment status quo in a already tense environment for Putin from external and internal pressure. — neomac

It totally does matter if it was a real coup or fake.

You outline the costs, which I agree with. Definitely is a PR issue for Putin, but that it's some sort of PR catastrophe is an outrageous exaggeration. He was challenged by Wagner, but still in power and Wagner is now being disbanded, and bunch of other key people made videos pledging their support for Putin and asking Prigozhin to stand down and so on. Everyone that actually matters immediately backed Putin which made pretty clear there wasn't going to be a coup now nor any time in the future. The events show that in terms of Russias internal politics everyone that matters backed Putin, and Prigozhin arguably doesn't matter at all in any real internal politics sense: he's not a politician, he's not military, he's no a government official -- he's a business man.

However, more important that evaluating exactly what the costs actually are of this event to Putin and the Kremlin, speaking of costs at all only matters if you comparing them to the benefits.

So, one benefit mentioned above is the large show of support of everyone else that matters in Russia.

However, there are several other potential benefits. the coup triggers large scale Ukrainian assaults on Russian lines. If Russia is trying to win a war of attrition, then this is exactly what Russia wants. If the "mutiny" didn't actually change any Russian readiness on the front, then triggering the Ukrainians to attack is more easy attrition (far easier than Russia attacking the Ukrainians).

There's all this recent talk of Russia blowing up a nuclear power plant or otherwise causing a nuclear event of some kind. If the Kremlin knows that's not what their planning, then the reason for such rhetoric is potentially a false flag. If Putin is now "weak" and not really in control, then it's difficult to pin any nuclear events on Putin. Indeed, even puts the Kremlin in the position to double bluff, do exactly what the Ukrainians are future-accusing them of already doing, then say it was just more "rogue" military elements.

Then there's just classic madman theory, which Putin and all the old guard will remember how effective that was when the US did it to the Soviet Union. No one in the West actually wants Russia to fall apart and nuclear weapons and material to get dispersed to random war lords and the blackmarket, in addition to even more inflation if Russian exports were to actually stop entirely, and so on, so making it seem that could possibly happen encourages Western support to Ukraine to be cautious and hesitant.

And, the beauty of madman theory is that even if your opponent think it's likely fake, just madman theory ... there's still that chance that it's not.

In addition to all these, there's the classic benefit of a fake coup in sussing out any potential collaborators and evaluating the loyalty of the command structure based on what people do, say, react etc. So, sure, maybe some PR costs to the coup happening, but if you can then purge everyone who maybe an actual threat then the benefits can more than outweigh the costs.

Finally, as I've explained in previous posts, there's the advantage of disrupting your enemies narrative and plans, making them improvise on false premises and make mistakes.

Especially considering:

and in two days nobody will remember the coup — Jabberwock

Of course, as @Tzeentch points out, how things play out will give us a lot more information. If Prigozhin suddenly has some new role in Belarus that would seem pretty incompatible with him also being a treacherous mutineer that brought Russia to the brink of civil war and showed Putin to be weak and disoriented, then it may seem a lot more plausible that he has a role to play and it's all theatre. If he's dead tomorrow, we may draw other conclusions.

Likewise, if Ukrainians exhaust more equipment and material and the temporary moral boost of their dreams coming true of Russia falling apart is followed by even lower moral of that not happening, and Russia starts their own offensives that rapidly take ground, it may certainly seem like the coup "just so happened" to have positive effects on the battle field, on the coup indeed will be forgotten and Russian moral will be high on the drug of victory.

Lastly, if Putin's power is even more consolidated than before, maybe the coup wasn't a "negative" for him after all.

Of course, maybe none of that happens and there's an even bigger coup tomorrow.

So we'll see.

Wagner had, however, grown into the most potent such force due to its ability to recruit from prisons and then its willingness to carry out costly frontal attacks that the military balked at despite apparently heavy pressure from Putin and his clique. — Count Timothy von Icarus

True, but Wagner could recruit from prisons only because the Russian state allowed that to legally happen, precisely for the purposes of having prisoners dying on the front lines rather than regular troops.

The whole point of mercenaries is they are more expendable and the civilian population is less affected if they die.

Which fit in this strategy of attrition during the last phase of the war, as well as mitigated the disruption of the sanctions (limit "normal people" dying while people are also dealing with sanctions, and so reduce overall discontentment and disruption; i.e. avoid mobilising as much as possible people actually needed for the economy to function properly).

While Ukrainians have been fighting with regular Ukrainians this past half a year, Russia has mostly been fighting with these mercenaries.

In parallel to this phase of keeping the fighting focus in Bakhmut and primarily using mercenaries, the missile campaign has aimed to attrit Ukrainian air defences.

This all makes a lot of sense if during this time the Russian population has hardened its support for the war (due to things like Ukrainian intelligence assassinating people in Russia, suppression of dissent, and so on), the mobilisation and training of reserves can complete, Ukrainian air defence is effectively depleted, continuous artillery attrition over the whole front, and the next phase of the war Russia will have high moral, civilian support and air and artillery superiority.

Not to say Russia achieved all these things, just what I think is clearly what they aimed to accomplish these last 6 months.

Any large scale manoeuvres require huge amounts of troops, so not feasible with only mercenaries, but this last attritional phase of the war does make sense to use mercenaries as much as possible to limit the effect of casualties on the civilian population.

Not that this basic strategy of using mercenaries explains the "rebellion", but just why Wagner has been such a focus since last six months.

If this current and next phase of the war involve large scale engagements (such as Ukrainian attacks at multiple points along the front and any large scale offensives the Russians may do) then mercenaries are of less relevant. It also makes sense to distribute the experience gained in Bakhmut throughout the whole of the military. Which again, doesn't really explain the coup, but does explain why Russian MoD would offer Wagner forces that "didn't rebel" to sign regular military contracts.

Putin's reputation in the West is completely irrelevant; for him his reputation at home is essential. The propaganda monolith is very sensitive to any detractions, Putin appearing weak before Russians (and that is exactly what has happened, as evidenced by Russian TV, forums and blogs) for him is potentially fatal. He has shown that he can be challenged with impunity - there is nothing worse for an authoritarian figure. — Jabberwock

Well good we agree his reputation in the West is irrelevant, and I assume you agree with my point of reputation vis-a-vis other authoritarians.

As for domestic reputation, I agree with your general framework, but this (in my view) simply supports that the events were staged as it is precisely these drawbacks that are mitigated.

In my experience, the biggest difference between planned (whether overt or covert) and unplanned events is the presence of risk mitigation. When things happen by surprise and you just need to deal with them, there's generally no time to carefully mitigate minor risks. A quick example is a device that finds itself in a hostile environment compared to a device designed for a hostile environment.

In this case, Prigozhin mitigates his remarks about Putin to such an extent it's difficult to call this a coup (as originally advertised) at all and it's now being referred to a mutiny or rebellion ... but mutiny or rebellion to do what?

Putin himself was not openly challenged, Prigozhin clarifies during his escapade that Putin is the duly elected head of government, and it's not a coup but a "march for justice".

Instead of Putin being actually challenged, he plays more the "godfather" role of mediating and resolving disputes between subordinates, all of which pay homage to him.

Not to mention that you have failed to show how exactly 'Russian lives have been saved'. Nothing of the kind happened and in two days nobody will remember the coup, as the military packages are getting bigger and bigger. — Jabberwock

Yes, definitely, if no one will remember the coup and it will be just forgotten, then all the costs you point out don't matter. Just like the US pulling out of Afghanistan and leaving their "friends" high and dry, and having people fall off planes and so forth definitely seemed like a "reputation hit" at the time but no one remembers or cares now. The Western narrative has become a mix of out of sight and out of mind as well as Afghanis just didn't fight for their freedom hard enough, US tried its best but you get what you deserve.

However, my point was that if it is an intelligence operation and somehow these negatives consequences you point out become relevant (costs outweigh the gains) they could just come out and say it was an intelligence operation to fool the West / Ukrainians and that saved lives somehow (whether it is true or not).

Most costs and risks are not static, there's ways to mitigate them by some action in the future. Something we have already seen; if it was planned then the problem would arise of how make people 100% believe there's a coup and a "point of no return" has been reached and there will be fighting between Wagner and regular forces ... but then unwind it afterwards. It's a problem, but if you think creatively you may come up with the idea of having Belarus broker a deal and Prigozhin will go hang out there and that's the resolution to the legal crisis. It still doesn't make much sense, but it makes more sense than someone internal to Russia brokering a deal and Prigozhin staying in Russia.

And think about it, why would Lukashenko spontaneously intervene in Russian internal affairs? If this was an "open challenge" to Putin and Putin wants these mutineers dead, it makes absolutely zero sense for Lukashenko to call Prigozhin like this was some high school level drama.

That is demonstrably false. Prigozhin alone has assembled a military force that appears to be decidedly better than the rest of the Russian forces. The whole point is that Shoigu and Gerasimov's troops could not equal Wagner even with theoretically bigger resources. If he was that easy to replace, then all Russian soldiers should equal Wagnerites. They pretty obviously do not. — Jabberwock

This is just pure delusion. 25 000 troops without any supply lines or airforce or satellite intelligence and so on, are not going to defeat a million troops with supply lines and all the hardware and gadgets. Russian regular forces could continuously carpet bomb Wagner positions. Additionally, not all Wagner troops joined the "rebellion", those that didn't have the opportunity now to just join Russian regular forces. So we don't even know how much troops we're talking about.

There's also zero evidence that each Wagner fighter is literally match for 10 or even a 100 Russian regular forces, even if equipment and supply lines where equal. Pretty much a ludicrous claim. To make matters even worse, since the "coup" started 1000km from Moscow (if this was a real coup) Wagner would need to break through fortified positions, and Russian troops need only surround them and continuously fire artillery, rockets, missiles and continuously carpet bomb the entire area.

Your statement here is so foolish and disconnected to any military reality that it's difficult to even contain in the minds eye for the purposes of critical scrutiny.

Again - they had little choice as Wagner was indispensable. Besides Prigozhin was not going off script for most of the war – only when he started to hint at his ambitions they decided to pacify him by sending Wagner to Bakhmut. — Jabberwock

That's not how any military or intelligence operation works or even business works. Someone who goes off script and is unpredictable and a loose cannon is a serious problem, as you don't know what they're going to do and how much damage they can cause, wittingly or not. It doesn't matter how fast you are at putting up drywall if you're likely to burn down the entire project.

And any organisation (government, business, non-profit, and even more so military and intelligence agencies) are extremely sensitive to what information is made public. It would not matter how good a developer or executive you are at Google if you start randomly talking to the press and causing PR problems (no single person could possibly produce enough value to offset all the time required to deal with and mitigate problematic talking to the press, in addition to not knowing what the person would say next). Likewise, whenever intelligence information is leaked (and not on purpose) the idea that the leaker was otherwise good at their job and maybe still "worth it" doesn't come into the equation.

Prigozhin is not essential to Wagner continuing to operate essentially exactly the same.

Equating Wagner with Prigozhin is just false and there would be zero reason to keep him around if he was causing problems, you just get rid of him (by an "accident" or just arrest him on sedition or make a executive order or pass a law nationalising his "private military organisation") and problem solved.

No imagination is needed, because we do know that he had the leverage: the war would go much worse without Wagner. If that happened, Putin would have much bigger problems than Prigozhin. If they had the choice between allowing his ambitions to grow and losing an important part of the front, it was not much of a choice at all. — Jabberwock

Again, Prigozhin does not equal Wagner, you can easily have Wagner without Prigozhin and there is zero evidence that Prigozhin's experience in prison and hotdog stands and fancy restaurants has made him some military strategist so brilliant that he is simply irreplaceable and the war cannot be fought without him. Likely he's not involved in the tactical decisions at all (but leaves that to military professionals).

Yes, you seem pretty hung up on that argument, but it does not follow. As in our previous discussions, you seem to treat the issue in a restrictively binary way – either Russian intelligence can orchestrate the whole US elections or it is helpless. That is, of course, a false dilemma. — Jabberwock

This is not what I've stated. I've stated the belief that Russian intelligence can orchestrate the US elections is incompatible with the belief that all these strange events with Prigozhin cannot possibly be staged but must be exactly what the Western media would wish to be true about them.

It is not a false dilemma. If Russia didn't engineer the outcome of Trump's election, then maybe it's still very capable, just not that capable.

Putin taking an enormous hit to his reputation (again: he literally promised Prigozhin, the traitor, harsh punishment and utterly failed to deliver) for the price of being in the news for three days (because that is how Western media works) is beyond absurd. — Jabberwock

For sure it's absurd. However, if you do actually want to stage the coup then this is one thing you just have to accept, that "strongly worded" statements go back and forth during the "coup", so there's buy in, and then everything is just walked back.

Sure, in some ways there's negatives for Putin's reputation, but if he remains in power and the Ukraine war and economy goes well there's no long term damage, and maybe later they're all like "aha, it was all just an intelligence operation, many Russian lives were saved by getting the West to believe whatever Prigozhin would tell them".

Also, keep in mind that Putin's reputation doesn't matter much in the West, he's already literally Hitler over here, and where it does matter is vis-a-vis other authoritarians, and these conversations are private, so he could just tell them it was all planned (whether it was or not). Point being, negative reputation in Western media may not really matter and how other authoritarians view things maybe very different (what likely matters most to other authoritarians is simply who is winning on the battlefield).

Kremlin has tolerated Prigozhin for months, because he was extremely useful for the war effort, at least until Bakhmut. — Jabberwock

But you don't need Prigozhin for that. You can just arrest him and replace him or even just pass a law nationalising Wagner at any time. There is zero evidence Prigozhin is some sort of brilliant military commander ... his curriculum vitae is going to prison and then running a hot dog stand and then fancy restaurants. There is zero military benefits Prigozhin provides that some other commander / businessman can't equally provide, maybe better.

As for the risks, someone going "off script" and is totally out of control and may do anything at anytime, bad for moral, etc. is impossible to justify tolerating during a war. You really think Putin and the ministry of defensc and intelligence and all the generals will sit around drawing up plans that can be "disrupted" by Prigozhin at any time? It makes zero sense.

But, more importantly, Prigozhin is (or was till Friday) idolized by all pro-war Russians: his troops were most efficient, did not flinch from most difficult tasks, actually made the effort (unlike Tik-Tok troops). — Jabberwock

Again, zero problem: "died in an artillery strike, hero of the nation".

You're argument is basically Prigozhin had the leverage and importance to have every higher-up in the military and Putin himself worried what he might do or say, worried about the power he's continued to be allowed to accumulate. Maybe that's true, but I find it a far longer stretch of the imagination than what is non-sensical theatrics is just that: theatre.

To remind people of what an actual coup attempt looks like:

↪frank I always try to give the benefit of the doubt. — Jabberwock

Well, give it a go.

Why would the entire Russian military and intelligence structure of Russia tolerate Prigozhin criticising them for months and months, "embarrassing them", lowering troop and citizen moral, and so on? Why would Putin tolerate it? Why would Russian intelligence (that has plenty control over the internet in Russia) allow Prigozhin to just post his dissenting videos completely impromptu?

How does Prigozhin do his "march for peace" for 800km without running into any road blocks or obstacles of any kind. Why would Prigozhin the "mutineer" be safe in Belarus and accept such a deal in order to get away with the fruits of extorting and embarrassing the Kremlin, the military, the intelligence structures?

You really think Prigozhin is just this powerful? Allowed to amass this unchecked power ... that's 100% dependent on the Russian military structure for ammo and supplies?

You really think the best explanation is that Prigozhin has just massive balls and (at least expects) to just waltz out of Russia into Belarus carrying his sacks of gold under his massive nuts?

↪boethius So either we go with what we know, and the known loss/gain ratio practically excludes the 'staged coup' scenario, or we assume we know almost nothing and have to refrain from conclusions. — Jabberwock

There's plenty of benefits we can analyse.

My point about benefits we are too unsophisticated to even know is in the context of people think Russian intelligence plaid a vital roll in getting Trump elected. If you ascribe that much power to Russian intelligence they are literally capable of anything. Literally anything happening in the entire world could be Russian intelligence.

However, I don't ascribe to that theory, so, yes, I would agree with you that we should be able to make some sense of things if its staged.

The basic benefit of whole Prigozhin thing is just getting your message in the Western news to begin with. Prigozhin sorts of "hacks into" the Western narrative machine. Of course, how is that possible? It's only possibly by telling things the Western media wants to hear. It's quite extraordinary, a Russian military commander (or whatever you want to call Prigozhin) starts to be basically a trusted source of what is happening on the front line.

If you want your enemy to believe something false for either tactical or strategic value ... well you just have Prigozhin mix it into his diatribes. For example, if you want your enemy to double down in Bakhmut, have Prigozhin say there's heavy losses and artillery is running out and so on. The consequences of a single false belief can be quite extensive and costly.

Likewise, want to frustrate the Ukrainian-Neocon narrative to get Ukraine more heavy weapons, maybe stage a coup and seem weak.

For, one asymmetry in this war is that Russia does not need to import any weapons, but Ukraine does, and (as has been demonstrated since the war started) actually getting heavy weapons into Ukraine can be a long and complicated diplomatic process.

To put things in context, the current top headlines on CNN are:

- Putin claims Russia would have put down 'armed rebellion'
- Russia President Addresses nation and warns against 'internal mutiny' in wake of Wagner insurrection
- Wagner boss calls march on Moscow 'protest' and not attempt to overthrow Putin
- Analysis: Yevegeny Prigozhin over-reached and lost
- Analysis: The West must now consider possibility of a Russian political collapse
- Purin power threatened: John Bolton advises not to 'underestimate' Putin
- Analysis: Despite an abrupt about-face, Prigozhin deeply humiliated Kremlin
- The next shoe to drop in Russia
- China throws support behind 'strategic partner' Russia
- Biden says the US and its allies had nothing to with Wagner's rebellion

Now, why Putin et. al. would want these kinds of headlines is to skip over the basic advantages of taking the initiative in forming headlines. Putin is in the news and the whole world wants to know what he has to say about these recent events, and who's not in the news: Zelensky asking for more weapons, or Graham and Blumenthal talking about their resolution to put Ukraine under the US nuclear umbrella, nor celebration or rationalisation of Ukraine taking a few villages in their offensive, nor any events in Ukraine at all.

You can see how 'relieved and comforted' people are on Russian TV... On Solovyov's show Bezrukov is complaining about the weak and impotent government. 'This couldn't happen in a strong country!' he says (on Solovyov's!). Margarita just looks stunned... Half of milbloggers are calling for blood... On RIA's forums very few people are 'comforted', most are frightened and confused. The most often asked question is: why nobody seeks to punish someone who shot down a dozen of Russian airmen? — Jabberwock

For sure it will remain confusing. However, the fright will dissipate with everything going back to normal/

But for any normal person, they will definitely be relieved and comforted by the coup ending suddenly. One day it's the return to the 90s, tanks gonna be firing at government buildings and so on, bracing for total chaos, collapse of government, and a civil war in Russia ... but also nothing makes sense and it's not a coup and a march for peace, and then the next day it's just completely over, "settled", bloodless.

I would say that both Prigozhin and Putin lost much too much for it to be staged. — Jabberwock

As I mentioned, you need to give to get. Coup has to be "sold".

Reasons the negatives can be mitigated are, for instance, confidence in victory on the battlefield.

However, the costs only make sense to consider in the context of the benefits.

The whole Western media is now talking about this coup and how weak Putin and Russia is ... what they aren't talking about anymore is the imminent nuclear attack in Ukraine by Russia nor needing to get more heavy weapons to Ukraine as Russian resistance has been "fierce". Zelensky is out of the news, and all we're talking about is Russian internal politics and how bad a Russian civil war could get.

However, it's difficult to complete such an analysis because we don't have all the secret information available to intelligence agencies. Maybe this was a high stakes reaction to information of some other intelligence agency engaging in some high stakes action (which may or may not be actually true), such as pre-blaming Russia for a nuclear attack and then going and spreading some nuclear material and blaming it on Russia.

Or, then just classic mad man theory as well as classic controlled opposition.

And my basic point is not to "prove" it was staged, just that it's certainly possible (and possible for reasons we may not have any information access about), but most of all, a group that ascribes enough elaborate propaganda power to Russia as to fix elections in the United States should certainly conclude from that belief that pretty much anything happening in Russia could be some sophisticated propaganda plot.

That's the point I want to emphasise the most, the belief that Russian intelligence can significantly influence US elections through US technology companies under US government regulation and NSA supervision is not compatible with the complete denial Russian intelligence can't come up with this whole Prigozhin character arch for reasons we may even be too unsophisticated to even imagine. If Russia can control events, and perception of events, in the US, they certainly can do it even better in Russia.

And this criticism is mainly towards Western media that harped on about Russia influencing US elections for years, compromat on Trump etc. and then turn around and take all these antics (since months and months and months) by Prigozhin at face value.

Well kudos for that! It did all look theatrical at times for sure, but shooting your own helicopters down is a bit extravagant unless Prigozhin suddenly turns up in the West telling stories to intelligence agencies or some such. Or am I missing something? — unenlightened

Well, first of all, maybe it is just a shit show. My main point is that people who say masterful Russian propaganda methods exercised through the West's own technology platforms under NSA surveillance got Trump elected should certainly at least consider the possibility these events as staged for propaganda purposes.

Not that I'm saying you personally say Russia got Trump elected, or even played a contributing roll (rather than the 2 billion of free airtime the Western media provided Trump), just that my basic point is in that context.

That being said, if it is staged the critical problem is selling it to Western media. You need to give to get. Prigozhin needs to "go the distance", at least shit talking wise, so that this is reported as a full blown coup, rather than Prigozhin just clowning around and looking stupid. Response of Western media could be ... yeah ... right, I'll believe it when there's actual fighting going on.

So, how do you sell it? Talk is cheap, so you first would want to say things that really seem "coup like", such as Ukraine never intended to attack Russia, the generals are traitors etc. ... of course you don't want to trigger an actual coup, so you also say you 100% support the elected president and you're not even doing a coup but just a "march for peace".

Then, yeah, maybe down a few helicopters. Did this even happen? Who knows. And if it did happen, could also just be staged as helicopters can be remotely controlled, shot down, or then fire fake missiles (i.e. missiles without warheads) and then set off a harmless fireworks from the helicopter and "go down". All this is happening inside Russia, so events can be 100% controlled. However, I haven't even seen any footage of these alleged helicopter engagements.

The video that supposedly proves Wagner came under attack is just a camera jogging through a forest, no sounds of battle whatsoever, with a guy just saying they came under attack.

Now, they keep on saying the "mutiny" was bloodless ... so at least the Russian narrative is no one died at all. So that doesn't even seem compatible with helicopters being downed, or then the pilots weren't harmed. The Russian narrative doesn't even make any sense on this point.

However, the whole point of an operation like this, if it's staged, is that it's so zany that it's impossible to tell. Sure, zany shit happens all the time. Take Trump's run for president, or Hunter Biden's laptop or then the character arch of Saddam Hussein. Really crazy shit does happen that genuinely doesn't seem scripted and is just driven by zany characters doing wild shit. Maybe Prigozhin's Russia's version of Trump and Ye, just 100% riffing it all the time.

What is the truth when it comes to the cloak and dagger doings of intelligence agencies and their associates, I view as best to keep an open mind, maybe it will become clear later or never. But as a matter of principle, I feel it's wise to assume people's who's job is to deceive you ... may actually succeed in doing so from time to time.

Yes and you predicted all that, obviously. But kept silent to better enjoy the exquisite irony right? Now the explanation pls. Everything must be connected to land bridges, right? — neomac

Team reality did predict it:

However, what could actually be staged is Prigozhin's midnight comedy blowout theatre show, and when I point that out suddenly the idea Russia has some propaganda tricks up their sleeve is ludicrous and certainly the Russians couldn't put together a simple plan of telling the enemy what they want to hear so that their own propaganda networks seed your message for you and your enemy basically "trusts" one of your commanders and take everything he says at face value.

And if that's not the case, why is he still alive?

Nothing easier than arranging an "accident" in a war zone. When it started, maybe he had gone rogue or something, but it's been going on for months so at some point it's difficult to interpret people's actions that are on the same team as something other than team work. — boethius

And I was in the middle of doing some basic research, writing up an analysis of why this latest chapter may too be staged ... take a break, and I wake up and the coup has ended ...

Why we would have reason to believe it was staged, is:

First, Prigozhin is very clear what he is doing is not a coup and the elected president is great ... so this is literally the first coup in history against subordinates of the head of government. So what could possibly be the plan if it's not staged? "March of freedom" to Moscow and then somehow get the Ministry of Defence job and run the war.

Second, the "coup" started literally 1000 km from Moscow. Rule number #1 of couping is get things done fast, "fait accomplie" as soon as possible and immediately seize both the key people and symbols of power. If this was some actual coup attempt, a part of his men would have sprung into action in Moscow, then heavy weapons

Third, Prigozhin has bee continuously criticising the whole officer corp, especially all the top brass, of Russia for months now, he's not in command of any significant number of troops (required for a coup) nor had any backing from any actual high ranking officer. There is literally zero conditions required to successfully stage a coup ... which Prigozhin is clear he's not even doing.

Fourth, Prigozhin only ever talks shit when Russia is winning and troops will be in high moral. Things escalated the last weeks of Bakhmut when it was certainly a foregone conclusion that Ukraine could not possibly hold on to a dozen or so buildings. So, whatever moral downer Prigozhin shit talking may actually caused, is more than compensated by actual victory on the battlefield in taking Bakhmut. It is the perfect timing for some venting of genuine negative emotions that citizens can then project onto Prigozhin: True patriot and son of Mother Russia. Likewise, this "coup" only happens after Ukraine publicly pauses their offensive, and no first day or then during the offensive where this sort of shit disturbing would provide maximum leverage or then (if a genuine coup) a minimum of Russian troops could be diverted to confront him (as the front lines must be adequately manned to prevent a Ukrainian breakthrough, and, moreover, a "coup" in Russia may supercharge the assaults).

So what is he doing. The narrative now is that it was indeed a show, but to simply negotiate more money. Now, it would in principle be possible (but highly unlikely) for going rogue to be a negotiation tactic. I'm going to skip over all the numerous reasons why that really does not seem to be the case, to get to the main one which is that the resolution is Prigozhin going to Belarus, which means absolutely nothing in terms of Prigozhin personal security. Now, if Prigozhin attained free passage to some actual neutral country that guaranteed his safety, like UAE or something, a place that was not a vassal state to Russia, where it would cause a diplomatic incident for Russia to be killing people there, and he could live with some plausible basis to believe he could enjoy his millions and millions, or even billions, he's cashed away so far and then extorted even more out of Russia with his little stunt, ok, that would be one thing. But he's literally going next door to Russia to a country with hundred thousand or more Russian troops where the leader of said country is literally a Russian Colonel somehow.

So, if it's not staged, then Prigozhin literally agreed to go somewhere where he would be killed, giving up all his leverage ... to be immediately killed as soon as he gets to Belarus or even along the way. He could be killed and then just never spoken of again, Belarus doesn't ever investigate and just never talks about him again.

The only rational situation where Prigozhin would do this sort of stunt is if he believed he was about to be assassinated anyways and he had nothing to lose, but in that case he'd negotiate leaving Russia's sphere of influence ... not accept just hopping over to Belarus and calling it square.

It's absolutely ridiculous as some sort of genuine rational plan on Prigozhin's part. There's also zero reason to believe he was about to be assassinated. He took Bakhmut, then was chilling in the rear, the worst (for him) that was being discussed is just the Russian MoD taking more control of Wagner. If Prigozhin talking shit and posting it to the internet was a problem, he would have been killed months ago in an "artillery strike - hero of the father land".

Now, I'm not saying things can't get so fucked up that this sort of fake coup happens by genuine surprise in some high stakes everyone is extorting everyone shit show.

However, a group of people that tie nearly everything they don't like happening in the media to "Soviet propaganda" should definitely be considering this as one case that may actually be this Soviet "nothing makes sense, everything is true and false" legendary propaganda move.

For the most part, these allegations of Soviet propaganda prowess bringing Trump to power through a network of international Marxist (who no one can name as working on behalf of the Soviet Union) and normalising gay and trans identity to break down the family unit and erode the military ethos and so on, is completely insane.

However, this whole Prigozhin saga is literally exactly what these alleged propaganda techniques would look like if they were to be actually used.

To what purpose?

Certainly there are costs of Prigozhin's shit talking ... but even then it's a controlled outlet of people's real emotions, so that's literally not even Soviet but simply standard propaganda methodology.

As for the benefits, to make a long story short, Prigozhin's antics are basically best described as "narrative spiking". You have Western spin doctors carefully crafting their cool aid, and everyone in the West (well, at least main stream media) is just standing around drinking it pleasantly, everything it good, everything is fine. Then, Prigozhin rides into the party on a Harley Davidson and a leather jacket and cracks two bottles of vodka and just drops them right into the cool aid like he doesn't even care. Suddenly everyone is getting drunk Prigozhin sauce, the calm and orderly party, more of a get together really, turns into a rowdy frat blowout with people losing their fucking minds about some coup happening or some shit. Everyone is suddenly a giddy Joe Rogan rambling on about their pet theories, as deep into things without having the slightest clue of what you're talking about as you can possibly get.

Why would you want to do this?

It's the only way for Russia to impact Western narrative and disrupt the medicine of the Western spin doctors. A "coup" in Russia was obviously not part of any plan in the West and it's then really difficult to blend back in these events into whatever the next version of reality and talking points are supposed to be.

To make matters worse, since these unexpected events in some ways go along with parts of the Western narrative (that Russia governance is incompetent and about to collapse ... any day now) all the foot soldiers of the Western narrative machine roll with it. These people still have jobs of reporting the news, and this is clearly news worthy and they are forced to report on things without there being time for a narrative consensus of the people who matter to be formed. Certainly sounds good to present things as a real coup in Russia and Putin is weak and so on, so Western journalists need to say something and so extend the existing narrative in a logical way to include these events.

Measures are certainly extreme, but this coup happens literally the day after both Ukraine and senators in the US rapidly escalate the talk of nuclear events in Ukraine and Nuclear retaliation for any nuclear events in Ukraine, that would obviously be Russia's doing by definition.

If you're Putin or anyone in Russian governance, intelligence or the military planning ... this is really alarming talk, by a side that just made a movie trailer for an offensive that has not made any gains remotely close to "cutting the land bridge", and arguably no actual gains at all.

... So, what's even more newsworthy than all this nuclear talk and would disrupt any actual plan, political or operational, nuke wise? A literal coup in Russia might do the trick. Basically throwing out a wild card in a tricky situation to at least disrupt your opponents plans.

Whether Russian analysts and decision makers were genuinely concerned of this nuclear narrative or not, or viewed it as sabre rattling, I don't know, but it's certainly something people would pay attention to.

However, there's also other benefits for such an event and reasons to stage it. Ukrainians and the West just went on an emotional rollercoaster of all their dreams suddenly coming true and then ... nada. Likewise, ordinary Russians were just faced with the anxiety and abyss of real chaos and then immediately relieved and comforted with the warm cloak of order and familiarity.

Which is literally the exact definition of this mythical Soviet propaganda system, which as an explainer for the entire liberal progressive movement has scant evidence, nor does it seem even possible for Soviet agents to be orchestrating the "left" since several decades right under the Western intelligence and media system's nose, but if you take this Soviet propaganda hypothesis and actually lay it out and ask what would fit this methodology, this whole Prigozhin saga is an exact match and clearly feasible and with direct communication between Prigozhin and Putin and Putin and everyone else of importance, there is clearly the organisational opportunity to pull it off, the scope is limited enough to be some actual feasible plan, "no blood was spilled".

After all, it started in 2014. — ssu

The war has not been so intense since 2014.

That there was 8 years of a low intensity civil war "supported" by Russia is not any basis to say the current intensity of warfare can last 8 years.

At some point things will start to fall apart, and it's difficult to bet against the far larger and stronger side with far more kinds of capabilities.

Probably why talk of a "frozen conflict" has ramped up in the West, the alternative to one side winning or a negotiated settlement is just each side being unable to carry out large offensives and things just stay like that.

However, I'm unsure if this would even be stable in this case, mainly due to the drones allowing attritional warfare to continue at great distances. This is very much a new thing in the history of warfare and may prevent a large no-mans land forming which each side hesitates to cross and firing artillery randomly back and forth is basically guess work and mainly just a reminder of what would happen if large infantry formations did enter no mans land.

Actually the Russians were in the same situation as the Ukrainians just few months ago. And that Winter Counteroffensive was forgotten as it didn't go anywhere. Likely what will happen with the Ukrainian counteroffensive is that it will take time. Both sides have their limitations. — ssu

This is exactly my thesis: that Ukraine offensives have the same problems as Russian offensives ... just worse as they have less capabilities (less planes, less helicopters, less air defence, less tanks and so on).

Going on failed offensives is not "initiative":

First of all, to have the initiative in war is extremely important. If you remain passive and don't engage in the enemy, you are handing the Russians the advantage: they can choose where and when to engage. — ssu

This is a false dichotomy. The choice is not between being passive and undertaking a major offensive that suffers significant losses. While defending you can do plenty of things such as launch small counter offensives and so on that have a positive cost-benefit. By not wasting your forces you constantly threaten to engage them anywhere along the front line as well as have them available (because they are not dead or destroyed) to reinforce lines where it is suitable to defend (i.e. not a few building left in Bakhmut but somewhere else that's more suitable or defence).

With such a strategy Ukraine can single (or explicitly say) that they can't defeat the Russians, but the Russians can't defeat them either, so it's better to accept our perfectly reasonable offer (which is the problem, Zelensky does not want to offer anything Russia might accept, seek concessions from either Russia or the EU or even the United States to compensate what he gives Russia to end the conflict).

How you give the Russians the option to simply defeat you is by wasting your forces in undertaking fools errands and no longer having the reserves necessary to maintain a defence on a 1000 km front or prevent the Russians from encircling the capital successfully this time and so on.

It's reported Ukraine has lost 4 MiGs in this offensive so far and also could be easily 6-18 months to actually have any F16s in Ukraine ... so that's a pretty significant loss of air capabilities that could have been used to keep things together until said F16s arise. Now, fog of war, who knows anything, but the point is if you want your offensive to have a good chance of success then you committing your planes you may need to do.

As the Western countries aren't themselves in war, there isn't a huge "ramping up" of manufacturing. Basically only Poland is making huge investments in armament. Yet Western manufacturers know that if the war ends, then the market immediately shuts down. Hence the increase in production is only marginal. — ssu

The West keeps saying they'll "do whatever it takes" blah, blah, blah ... but we agree that the goal here is not "Ukraine winning" in any military sense.

Also,

A. it's not "Western manufacturers" who have decided not to ramp up manufacturing and NATO just has to accept that. If NATO wanted it could just order the rounds needed to fight a long war, or provide "cost +" contracts to build the capacity for it ... and if they aren't needed because there was a settlement ... well maybe there's a settlement precisely because the West has demonstrated commitment to a long war!!

B. governments could literally pass a law ordering these companies to produce whatever the government wants.

Ukraine isn't running out of able bodies. Do notice that counterattack has been quite local and limited. Ukrainians understand well that this war can go on for a long time. After all, it started in 2014. — ssu

First, my point was that is a risk on the Ukrainian side of attritional warfare. They have less people so they will run out of people first.

Second, we don't see Ukraine's "million man army" in the field or anything close to that and I would put good money on that being because they ran out of able bodies, explaining expanding to 60 as well as require women to register for the draft too.

I can speak from experience, and I think you as well, it's not easy being a soldier. It's really very tough and a lot of people simply can't handle it mentally or physically and that includes people who "looked good on paper". A lot of people are not only ineffective soldiers but instead a liability on the battlefield: unreliable, unpredictable and down right dangerous (and this includes professional soldiers ... just a lot less compared to drafting large swaths of the population with basically not filter).

There's a reason young and fit men have been the "go to" source of front line soldiers throughout history, and if you look at this pool of men it's not all that much in a population such as Ukraine when you factor in modern sensibilities and we don't have societies anymore 100% dedicated to warfare that throw babies of cliffs to prove their toughness or similar hazing rituals.

Warfare is also a lot more complicated nowadays than standing in a phalanx and I would also say a lot more terrifying.

Furthermore, as we've discussed plenty, armour and air defence really is essential for any offensive manoeuvres and these systems require training which requires time, the extent people can "learn on the job" in the front lines I think is extremely limited in considering assault capabilities. People can learn how to dig and stand in a trench and fire in the general direction of the enemy as well as fire shoulder launched missiles; which is why when that was the most successful phase of the war when such tactics were relevant (and therefore Ukraine had the highest leverage).

As I mentioned when it was happening in the first weeks of the invasion, ATGM's and stingers and the like are really great for arresting Russian advances and inflicting serious damage, but cannot possibly be the basis of any offensive manoeuvres (so Ukraine cannot "win" on that basis and should negotiate; the West decided instead to pretend that was feasible but eventually accept the obvious military reality and supply tanks, but too little too late in my opinion, but had they been early worm on that ... maybe Russia blows up massive Western tank columns with tactical nukes, so we'll just pretend people can just run around with ATGM's and win a conventional war).

Do we know that it fires significantly more shells than Ukraine now? Can you provide any sources? — Jabberwock

If you follow pretty much any source about the war, West or Russia or Qatari or Indian or whatever, the Russians firing significantly more shells at every phase of the war I have never seen even remotely questioned.

Here's a source from the Washington post

Even amid a shortage, Ukraine is firing about 7,700 shells per day, or roughly one every six seconds, according to a Ukrainian military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. Russia, which may also be running low, is firing more — by some estimates triple that amount. — Facing critical ammunition shortage, Ukrainian troops ration shells

As long as Russia had artillery advantage, it pushed forward, because it is essentially the only tactics they have used. Then they stopped. — Jabberwock

You need more than an artillery advantage.

Since Bakhmut (which the Russians captured by the way) there has been a "who launches their offensive first" game.

It's to the Russians advantage that Ukraine goes first, for a bunch of reasons that I can explain if you want, so Russia waited them out.

Ukraine definitely would have preferred Russia launch some major offensive and then be on the defensive, but Russia had no media pressure to do so.

And it will not be 'exposed salient' - if the land bridge falls, then most likely the Kherson oblast falls as well, Russians will not be able to supply the area just from Crimea. — Jabberwock

Absolutely classic arm-chair general analysis.

Crimea is a massive island with a massive naval base and a whole bunch of military bases and can be supplied by both road and ferry and there are already hundred thousand or more troops that would be to the West of any land-bridge cut, troops with plenty of ammunition and supplies already stationed there.

It would take a significant amount of time for supplies to even start to be an issue, so this Ukrainian salient cutting the land bridge would need to hold out from intense well supplied attacks from both sides while itself having significant supply issues, which if you really can't see what they would be I can explain it to you.

For Ukraine to solve those issues would require an absolutely massive force to not only punch through Russian lines and make this salient in the first place but then dig in and hold the entire salient and get supplies in under constant attacks and so on ... in addition to needing to hold all the rest of the lines as well where Russia could counter offensive taking advantage of any weakness.

What you describe is not remotely close to being some easy thing Ukrainians can casually do.

Now, if NATO trained up a 200 000 well equipped army that's ready to enter the fight and do this thing on top of everyone who is already there and have been holding lines more-or-less, then, ok, I would say it's definitely doable with such a force, even without the air cover, and the war is about to get super messy, as it's unclear what the Russians would do.

And, as I've mentioned before, maybe there is some secret island where NATO has built up a 200 000 man force. We can't know for sure, but the only reports I've seen is that NATO trained 35 000 for this offensive operation, which is really just not enough to do what you're talking about.

Of course, we'll soon find out who's right and who's wrong, that's for sure.

They have not done that because they were not ready. And yes, it will take tens of thousands of lives and yes, it could still fail. Still, it is the best manuever at this time. — Jabberwock

Spending tens of thousands of lives and still failing would definitely be a complete military catastrophe, and considering that risk you'd need pretty powerful arguments about why it is worth the risk you're talking about, not just stating "it is the best manuever at this time".

And I am not saying that Ukrainians will surely suceed - only that they have a reasonable chance. The claim that they have 'zero chance' is rather absurd. — Jabberwock

Leaving out the word qualifying "zero chance" that appears immediately before it is simply dishonest.

What I state is:

My theory is that Ukraine's offensive has essentially zero chance of succeeding and NATO and the Ukrainians know that. — boethius

"Essentially zero chance" means very close to zero.

When this cutting the land bridge manoeuvre had I think some reasonable chance (but still pretty low and would be at extremely high cost) was last year before the Russian mobilisations and building up all these fortifications and mine fields as well as before retreating from Kherson and consolidating the lines (while sanctions were causing serious disruptions etc.).

Why that didn't happen is I think is likely for the exact same problem considering the idea now: what then? If you do cut the land bridge, you need to hold it, and well supplied Russians cutting the salient from both sides would result in a massive encirclement. So, instead Ukraine went with some largely propaganda wins of Kherson and Kharkiv (notice neither lead to cutting the land bridge, and if you wanted to cut the land bridge, even better if there's a bunch of Russians even more cut off in West-Kherson).

Which is the general problem of the Ukrainian idea of "winning" on the battlefield: the only way to actually end the war through solely military means is to invade and conquer Russia. Simply because this war has this strange framework of "Ukraine can't / won't attack Russia proper" doesn't somehow just get rid of the basic dynamic of every previous war that "winning" by military means requires conquering your enemy.

The alternative to conquering your enemy is a negotiated settlement, a forever war ... or ... getting conquered.

Now, people argue a forever war, or as close as can be managed, is good for the West. I'm not convinced this is even true, but what is clearly true is that a forever war that does not result in victory for Ukraine cannot possibly be good for the average Ukrainian. In such circumstances, the longer the war goes on the worse it is for the weaker side, never better, mainly because the stronger side will feel they need more and more compensation for the war going forward. Now, you may say those feelings are unjustified, that's certainly a valid debate on philosophyforum, but the reality is that's what will inform negotiating positions: the more the war goes on, the more Ukrainians need will need to give up in a peace settlement, not less.

This of course creates a classic cycle of a long war where the losing side can't accept the costs since "day x" (where they had the most leverage) has not gained anything and the stronger side feels they need to have more and more to "show for it" to justify the fighting and losses, making it even harder for the weaker side to compromise.

The whole reason for a conventional deterrent against a stronger force is basically "mutually assured pain": it maybe not rational for the weaker side to fight a long war as they'll lose, but it may not be rational either for the stronger side to fight a long war either as it's not cost-beneficial.

Which is a big part of the tragedy here, that Ukraine had a good negotiating position early on in the war, by not capitulating and clearly demonstrating their will to fight. Unfortunately for everyone and their relatives who have died since, a good negotiating position doesn't mean you get what you want. Because Zelensky understands basically nothing about politics, Ukraine not only had a good negotiating position against Russia but also against the EU. Zelensky could have leveraged the EU's desire to keep getting Russian gas to get more from either Russia or the EU in compensation for ending the war and business as usual continuing. For example, Russia has stated multiple times it doesn't have a problem with Ukraine joining the EU, so Zelensky could have leveraged the early good negotiating position to get that EU membership one way or another, investment, all sorts of stuff etc.

Fast forward to today and all that leverage playing the EU and Russia against each other (in the sense they both want things from each other at the time; mainly maintain the oil and gas trade) to get the best possible deal for Ukraine is mostly gone.

Instead, Zelensky listens to the UK and US who are both not part of the EU, surprise, surprise not only have the least interest in the war stopping but plenty of arms-dealing reasons for the war to continue, not to mention different currencies that could use, maybe even need, a weak Euro (what I believe this war is ultimately about). But what did Zelensky get for stopping negotiations and continuing the war? Just more war.

Russia has long ceased to have any artillery advantage, with missiles it is clearly at a disadvantage - it has spent most of its stocks last year, now it is using mostly current production. — Jabberwock

This is simply pure invention. We didn't know Russia's stock before before, during nor now.

What we do seem to know is Russia fires significantly more shells than Ukraine. I've not seen that disputed anywhere, except your comment here being the very first time.

Moreover, unlike the Western counterparts, they are too inaccurate to be used very effectively on the frontline. — Jabberwock

First, dumb shells can be very accurate even in adverse conditions and pencil and paper calculations. I've seen this done first hand. It's just math and skill (of everyone involved). Self propelled artillery with everything done by computer can be quite reliable and keep in mind that every observed hit is data for recalibrating things.

Second, a large part of the tactical use of artillery is to suppress enemy movement. You have no idea where incoming shells are going to hit, where the next will hit and for how long, and the incapacitating range of these shells can be hundred meters, so infantry take cover and hence don't go anywhere in the meanwhile. Even outside lethal range, small shrapnel pieces can still penetrate the skin causing wounds that slow people down, can get infected and aren't a good thing.

Third, Russia too has guided munitions, but more importantly even Western media admits Russia is dominating the electronic warfare front, downing Ukrainian drones while flying its own. Even if you have guided munitions of whatever sort you need to be able to see what you're firing at.

kraine still has enough HIMARS and now also Shadow Storms, which it uses quite well — Jabberwock

These systems do not cover infantry and breach fortified front lines, they can blowup high value targets, such as the general (one use of US spy satellites and these sorts of expensive missiles).

Of note about this particular general, at least according to Reuters, the source of this news is from a Russian blogger and not confirmed by the Russian military. So who knows, but obviously long range guided missiles can attack such high value targets, but that doesn't actually win any battles.

And the difference in the field is also rather important: all Ukrainians have to do to free Kherson and most of Zaporozhe is to cut the path to the sea - they do not even have to take Mariupol or Berdyansk. — Jabberwock

If "all they have to do" is that ... why haven't they done it yet?

What you're talking about could easily cost tens of thousands of lives and still fail.

Worse, even if Ukrainians succeeded in such a manoeuvre it does not result in the situation of just needing to decide whether to invade Crimea or call it a day.

Russia will immediately counter attack to retake the land bridge, cutting North to isolate this exposed salient. It would continue to be fierce fighting and Ukrainians will need to keep this salient supplied to even stand a chance.

It's only if you leave your enemy alone for an entire year that they build up massive multi-layers fortified lines behind a fortified buffer zone and mine fields everywhere. The Russians are unlikely to do that, and would be attacking from both directions to retake the land in question.

... Which Ukrainians in the real world have not even gone through the buffer zone to reach the first fortified line, and you think reaching the sea is basically a done deal?

That is, they have 90 km to go (out of which they made 20). Sure, the main line will be tougher, there will be mines and defence lines, so losses are expected, but the situation still favors them. As the whole belt is within the range of Ukrainian missiles and some of its artillery, the Russian defence will lack significant depth. — Jabberwock

As pointed out above, if Ukraine manages to create a salient it will be under attack from the West and East.

What you're talking about is not some easy task and even if done you'd then need to hold onto this salient that cuts the land bridge requiring significant and continuous supplies.

But we'll obviously see in the coming weeks who's right and who's wrong.

My theory is that Ukraine's offensive has essentially zero chance of succeeding and NATO and the Ukrainians know that.

So why do it anyways?

The militarily prudent thing for Ukraine to have done is do to the Russians strategy of digging in, inflict losses and just retreating whenever defences degrade, conserving forces and vehicles as much as possible. Simply because Russia has more numbers and capabilities obviously does not mean it can easily win, as we've seen in the war so far the defender has significant advantage.

If Ukraine spent lives and equipment more conservatively, it would be clear Russia could not possibly "win" and would be forced to negotiate.

The problem is, Ukraine and NATO has defined Russia "winning" as holding on to any Ukrainian territory whatsoever and Ukraine losing as giving up any territory whatsoever and the only acceptable outcome is removing Russia from the lands formerly known as Ukrainian, including Crimea.

What logically follows from this idea is "holding on" to every inch of territory at incredible cost, such as in Bakhmut, and also continuously promising an offensive that will push Russian forces all the way back to their previous border.

This political posture "plays well" for the Western media, building up the mythology needed to keep the arms flowing, but if it's impossible to deliver on, regardless of the arms that can be pumped in, you end up in this kind of situation of needing an offensive simply to fit the narrative.

This not only wastes significant men and material but will boost Russian morale while lowering Ukrainian morale, and ultimately a narrative that is nonsensical will eventually fall apart lowering Western morale generally speaking. We're already seeing the cracks.

Those apologetics don't make much sense (to me anyway).
Socialists sort of promoting nationalist authoritatian oppressive degenerative capitalist Kremlin...? :brow:
Maybe they are just proxies. — jorndoe

Even the mainstream Western media has thrown plenty of doubt on what caused the dam to collapse, mainly due to there being literally zero evidence and, more importantly, the Western media has got the memo to stop just repeating everything Ukraine says and start being critical (setting up the, if not resolution, then Western aid pullback).

As for the:

the cui bono card — SophistiCat

Cui bono is literally the first thing any investigator asks themselves when confronted with literally any crime.

Doesn't mean who benefits is who did it, but it's clearly at least worth checking out.

You think a defence attorney has ever said in response to the evidence their client pocketed the insurance money ... "OMG, here we go, prosecutor playing the 'cui bono card', I rest my case."

Seems that three of the six Leopard 2 mine-clearing tanks that Finland gave to Ukraine have met their end. But in a war of attrition, you spend materiel. The side that is attacking will face losses, if it doesn't have superiority on the battlefield. Yet likely the counterattack will go on for weeks or for months. — ssu

Unfortunately I don't have much time for the forum just right now ... but who's ramping up manufacturing to replace this material? Likewise, where will people get replaced from when Ukraine starts to run out of able bodies?

The premise that the war is attritional is almost exactly the same as the premise Ukraine cannot possibly win.

As I pointed out months and months ago, Ukrainian offensives will face all the same problems of Russian offensives (mines and ATGM's make it very difficult to advance) ... just with far less capabilities. Additional capabilities (overwhelming artillery, glide bombs, missiles of various kinds) are why Russia can advance at all.

Even more worryingly for Ukraine, there seems to be plenty of footage of both Russian helicopters and planes engaging vehicles over the front, which indicates Ukraine anti-air capabilities are significantly degraded (basically exactly what the leaked papers described).

To make matters even worse for Ukraine, it continues to fight with significant artillery disadvantage.

There is basically not a single metric in which Ukraine has an advantage that can compensate all the disadvantages (numbers, vehicles, air power, electronic warfare, missiles and anything else).

The Ukrainian offensives makes zero sense and is only happening because it is part of the media narrative that promised there would be an offensive. Lives are being spent basically to just prop up a delusional propaganda version of the world a little while longer.

You do notice that there has to be done some engineering work to get these fit into an aircraft? Or to create such multi-function radars that act both in the search and the targeting mode. — ssu

You don't need to fit these radars into an aircraft, fighters already have radars that can track, they have to be closer than these massive ground based radars but they can be at high altitude and looking down to track low flying targets trying to evade said massive ground based radars.

(Just a technical note, use acronym SAM, surface to air missile, as with missiles AA stands for air-to-air missiles) — ssu

I'm honestly not sure, I've never seen AA to mean air-to-air missile, and if in some technical discussions somewhere that abbreviation is used, the general understanding is standing for Anti-Air, for example:

Poland's AA defences were no match for the German attack, and the situation was similar in other European countries.[56] Significant AAW (Anti-Air Warfare) started with the Battle of Britain in the summer of 1940. QF 3.7-inch AA guns provided the backbone of the ground-based AA defences, although initially significant numbers of QF 3-inch 20 cwt were also used. The Army's Anti-aircraft command, which was under command of the Air Defence UK organisation, grew to 12 AA divisions in 3 AA corps. Bofors 40 mm guns entered service in increasing numbers. In addition, the RAF regiment was formed in 1941 with responsibility for airfield air defence, eventually with Bofors 40 mm as their main armament. Fixed AA defences, using HAA and LAA, were established by the Army in key overseas places, notably Malta, Suez Canal and Singapore. — Anti-Aircraft Warfare

And refers generally to AA systems. However, I agree SAM is more specific, but to a general audience (such anyone who may be reading this) my assumption is that they would read AA as anti-air. Now I think most English speakers would be familiar with SAM also, but simply saying ground based AA missile seemed to me the clearest way to for the largest audience. But I'm happy to use SAM and people need to look it up if they don't know what it is.

Those high flying Russian fighters have to stay out of the reach of the Ukrainian GBAD also. And obviously those future F-16s, when they come, will be used very cautiously. Yet in any case, the outcome relies on a large variety of factors than just the specs of the weapon systems. The way the weapon systems are used, the way the forces operate is far more important than the technical aspects of a weapon system. — ssu

Yes, we definitely agree the use of the F16s will be cautious, and there is plenty of airspace hundreds of kilometres out of range of any of the missiles we've been discussing.

The purpose of discussing the technical aspects here is to evaluate the risks involved. What a system can and can't do is the starting point of the risk analysis in trying to plan operations.

The point of developing the the facts that Russian fighters can fly high and look down is simply to establish that "flying low" is not some easy solution to the problem of SAMs.

Taking into consideration the speeds at which high altitude Russian fighters can fly, is to simply give an idea that Russia can potentially chase these low flying F16s at high speeds and maybe willing to risk being shot down themselves to do so, because they underestimated the risk, or because they have more aircraft or because they are confident they can destroy the F16 before being themselves destroyed (or all three). One certainly could not be exactly sure Russians wouldn't take large risks to shoot down your F16 nor be exactly sure what the capabilities of their systems are.

Vis-a-vis the speed of Russian missiles compared the their American counterparts, I completely agree that "The way the weapon systems are used, the way the forces operate is far more important than the technical aspects of a weapon system," but the underlying lesson here is that American weapons have been developed to be effective in the context American war fighting system and we are, in my view, starting to see the limits of what can be picked out of the US system, dropped in Ukraine in an entirely different context than the designers had in mind in making the specifications and the war planners had in mind in deciding how many such systems to order.

Just to give on example:why did we see footage of Bayraktar-drones destroying Russian SAM launchers early in the war and not anymore? The reason is that at start of the war there were so many limitations to SAM use as the Russian aircraft indeed flew over Ukrainian territory, that Bayraktars could have a field day. Then when Russian aircraft weren't flying anymore in Ukrainian territory (or at least, not so much), then the decision to fire on an aircraft was made easy. After all, we ought to remember the unfortunate use of a BUK-M1 shooting down that Malesian plane earlier. — ssu

Completely agree.

The men and the military itself does matter also. Best example is just how few Abrams tanks were destroyed when operated by the US Army in Iraq and how many similar tanks have been destroyed by the Houthis fighting Saudi-Arabian troops in Yemen. — ssu

That's somewhat an oversimplification, as Iraq is flat and the US had overwhelming superior forces and "next generation" technology (in particular night vision) engaging in the open field. The war in Yemen is not so similar.

However, for the air war over Ukraine, Russians have proven proficient and their systems effective and presumably have shot down a significant amount of Ukrainian aircraft.

The F16s can keep Russian jets from flying all over Ukraine as in the first days of the war, but it is mostly a specifications issue: once a Russian jet leaves the cover of its own air defence bubble, F16s, either on patrol or then scrambled, can fire long range missiles at the Russian jet, so the Russian jets stay in their defensive bubbles to avoid that happening.

And if things get really bad with both SAM depletion and Russians able to effectively target F16 airbases in Ukraine, they can always simply be based in a NATO country. In terms of denying Russia air supremacy, they are clearly more useful than not having any planes.

Yeah, well, and AWACS or a fighter cannot yet act as an fire control radar to a GBAD missile. Not yet, at least. And it doesn't go like "fire in that direction and maybe the missile will find it's target". — ssu

Definitely firing missiles blindly in a general direction is unlikely to succeed.

However, sending targeting information from one system to another is not difficult and exists in plenty of forms already.

I do not think sharing the information would be the limiting factor, but rather the range of radar to track targets from look down which will be closely guarded secret.

The wikipedia article on this is barely a page long, but does inform us the technology is from the 60s:

Flight tests of the AN/ASG-18 system, using a modified Convair B-58, began in 1960.[3] During the 1960s, YF-12 flight tests were conducted, which included the use of the YF-12's onboard AN/ASG-18 radar system in conjunction with AIM-47 missiles to shoot down target drones. — Lookdown / shootdown

So, presumably this exact problem has been looked at pretty closely by the developers of these systems.

For what it's worth, ChatGPT claims:

Generally speaking, a high-performance radar in lookdown mode can detect and track targets at ranges of tens to hundreds of miles (or kilometers), depending on the size and altitude of the target, the radar's power and sensitivity, and the clutter conditions. — ChatGPT

However, what we can know is that it's obviously a risk that Russia has such capabilities and they work fine, so will you risk your F16's ... to accomplish what?

Or in other words, the effective engagement range of a SAM is far shorter than it's max range. — ssu

Yes, but how much is the critical question.

In the situation we are discussing, low flying aircraft, such as to avoid Russian ground based AA missiles, cannot reach much above Mach 1. So this is only reducing the effective range of the missile by 20% and that's assuming the F16 is already flying in the opposite direction.

The fact range of anti-air missile (of any kind) is reduced by your speed running away is an advantage to the Russians in this situation of trying to fly high, look-down and track and maybe send tracking information to said GBAD systems or then maybe just shoot at themselves.

The Sukhoi Su-35 can MiG-29 fly above mach 2 at high altitude and the MiG 25 and 31 close to or exceeding mach 3, though with risk to the engines (still better then being shot down).

Flying away at Mach 3 is reducing the range of a Mach 5 missile by 70%, which is pretty significant.

The purpose of these considerations is that if you want to cover your F16 operations near the front with your own ground based air defence, you may need to get really close to the front, now risking your critical GBAD systems, otherwise you risk a supersonic interception, firing missiles and then easily running away at Mach 3 when your F16 is stuck at barely above mach 1 (ChatGPT claims "While I couldn't find an exact figure for the F-16's maximum speed at low altitudes, it is generally expected to be around Mach 1.2 to Mach 1.4 ").

To make matters worse, at least according to Wikipedia, the:

Speed PAC-2/PAC-3: Mach 4.1 — MIM-104 Patriot, wikipedia

And,

Maximum speed: Mach 4. — AIM-120 AMRAAM, wikipedia

Whereas:

The S-300FM Fort-M (Russian: С-300ФМ, DoD designation SA-N-20) is another naval version of the system, installed only on the Kirov-class cruiser Pyotr Velikiy, and introducing the new 48N6 missile. It was introduced in 1990 and has a missile speed of approximately Mach 6 for a maximum target engagement speed of up to Mach 8.5, a warhead size of 150 kg (330 lb), an engagement range of 5–150 km (3.1–93 mi), and an altitude envelope of 10–27 km (6.2–16.8 mi).
— S-300 missile system

And there's actually the specifications of the missiles and speeds further down the page, for example:

V55K, range 47 km, mach 5.5
5V55R, range 75/90 km, mach 5.5
5V55U, range 150 km, mach 5.8
48N6P-01, 195 km, mach 5.8

Which is a lot faster than a low flying F16.

Of note, the Russian air-air missile is also faster than its American counter-part, "Maximum speed Mach 5 – Mach 6", and, at least according to Wikipedia:

Mid-body strakes enhance lift[1] hence increases range. According to Defence Today, the range depends on the flight profile, from 80 nautical miles (150 km) for a direct shot[1] to 215 nautical miles (398 km) for a cruise glide profile.[...]

The missile can attack targets at altitudes of 15–25,000 meters, guided semi-actively or actively through the Agat 9B-1388 system.[5] — R-37 (missile)

Maybe US has faster missiles (but will they supply them to Ukraine?), but whatever the speeds involved, I think we agree that flying near Russian airspace is risky and to simply "help" in attritional warfare makes no sense to risk.

Of course, if some decisive battles take place that may end the war one way or another then maybe it would make sense to send in aircraft, but my in the context of my overall position I do not think such battles will take place, and if they do it would be battles that may decisive in Russia's favour, not Ukraine.

Furthermore, all these missiles may explain why Ukraine has lost most of its aircraft and is asking for F16s and sending pilots to train on these aircraft instead of flying existing aircraft in Ukraine.

And my point is just why other countries would have zero incentive to trade with the West?

Many countries would be happy if the world trade would be done other currency than dollars. But that simply is something that goes back to older times. — ssu

Obviously there's no incentive to not have trade routes open, the question is the cost extracted by the US to engage with their system.

Countries, basically all countries, want the access to trade but not the cost, so this gives rise to negotiations and trade agreements.

If there's no where else to go, your negotiating position is weak (and sanctions or the threat of sanctions are basically only possible in such conditions, otherwise you're only harming yourself by blocking your own access to markets without that even being all that negative for said countries of those markets), whereas even the hypothetical of somewhere else to go strengthens your negotiating position.

It's not a binary thing and the future has to be "priced in".

For example, a monopoly may start lowering their prices simply due to the existence of an alternative even if that alternative isn't very good or can't possibly scale ... yet. This happens all the time in hardware in order to protect market share, hopefully drive the upstart out of business, and hardware monopolies are accused of this all the time.

In software the solution is to make your product free and make money on advertisement or other added value since a monopoly position is worth more than any revenue at all of selling your product. Why even Windows is free now.

US foreign policy can be viewed as protecting their monopoly on the global trading system.

Now, you may say a competitor arising and putting downward price pressure of what the US charges (not always money ...) for accessing their system is good for most people on the planet and even most Americans.

I would not have problems agreeing with. This change isn't some catastrophe and the US will still be there and much, if not most, of the globe will still be subscribed to Pax Americana, but it is a profound change for all those current subscribers that aren't "loyal fans". Maybe the US will need to offer a advert-free version for example.

I have a meeting starting a few minutes, so I'll respond to the rest of your points later, but I feel we do agree on the fundamentals just have different attitudes towards its meaning.

And, of course, these changes are very new, maybe Russia's alternative economic system grows or falls apart, but that Russia has survived sanctions so far is a major geopolitical change and some countries, I'd say most importantly Iran, are jumping on the prospective benefits of this change.

And? Even if the S-400 has a great range, again basic physics comes to play as you remarked to Boethius. The Earth is round and also Ukraine a big country. Hence you can do the math just how this effects target acquisition of radars and their ability to track low flying aircraft. — ssu

The mission purpose of S-400 long range missiles are against big and slow targets such as tankers and AWAKS, to keep these as far way from the fight as possible.

However, you could also have the situation where high flying Russian fighters can track low-flying F16, though out of range, so an S-300 or S-400 could then engage with guidance from the Russian fighters.

To what extent this is likely to occur, a capability Russia has even developed, is a different question, but, at least in principle, simply because ground based radar are limited by the horizon does not mean those missiles cannot engage with air-based tracking.

Keep in mind also that high flying supersonic fighters decrease the range of AA systems because they can outrun incoming missiles. I.e. the range of a 100 km missile travelling at mach 5 is reduced to 50km if fired at a target running away at mach 2.5, and this doesn't take into account altitude, counter measures or additional manoeuvres that will all favour the aircraft.

How SAM sites mitigate this is by moving around and simply waiting to turn on when the fighter is easily within range (such as with information provided by radar farther away, that can easily track high flying planes).

How fighters mitigate this is just staying behind their own lines where, presumably, there are no enemy SAM sites that may turn on suddenly.

I don't see why not.

Every use of these F-16s will incur some risk.

One advantage the Ukrainians will have is the intel they are getting from the US and other nations will probably allow them to craft a fairly accurate picture of the Russian AA network and use it to their advantage. — Tzeentch

By risk, I mean significantly more risk. Flying anywhere near Russia / the front is going to be significantly more risky than flying along the border of Poland or Romania / inside those countries.

My contention is the F16s will stay far closer to Polish and Romanian air space than Russian.

The other proposed roles for the F-16s I don't find so convincing. The Russians barely use their air force over Ukraine, and taking down missiles with fighters is not ideal for the reasons I mentioned.

Are they going to put a 40 million dollar plane into the air to swat a handful of 20,000 dollar Iranian drones, with missiles that each cost a million also? — Tzeentch

Well 1 million is an exaggeration ... but not by much.

Pentagon Spent At Least $1.5 Million on Missiles to Down Three High-Altitude Objects — Wallstreet Journal

Maybe there are cheaper "low altitude" missiles, but I don't see why that would be. Each side winder costs about a third of a million USD.

That being said, probably just flying near them with a jet would cause them to fall out of the sky and certainly cheaper methods either exist or are being developed.

Actually doing so would not, in my opinion, be for the purposes of winning the war but simply testing systems in real world conditions, which is certainly a big factor, generally speaking, to get F16s into the war theatre.

Maybe they're anticipating a heavier use of air power by the Russians, however again I think planes would not be the logical choice if their intention was defensive use. — Tzeentch

This is my core argument about the F16s, that if air defence Ukraine were to completely fail then Russia would gain air supremacy and bomb and strafe freely over all of Ukraine.

The only reason far superior Russian air power hasn't been so decisive is because the Russians have the exact same problem I am describing of not being able to risk expensive planes in attritional warfare.

Compare to the first manoeuvre phase of the war where Russia took large amounts of territory and then Ukraine retook large amounts of territory, you at least "get something" for downed air craft and helicopters. Whether it was needed or then cost effective is another question, but it at least makes sense to risk planes when decisive battles are being fought to take strategic ground.

Obviously Russia didn't like losing aircraft and helicopters, but had they not taken and held the land bridge to Crimea that would have been far more embarrassing.

In an attritional phase of war, risking planes is just not justifiable. The amount of successful sorties you need over the front to justify the loss of an aircraft and pilot is incredibly high and there are far cheaper alternatives such as artillery.

Of course, ideally you can drop bombs from a safe distance from the front, which is now what's happening with the glide bombs.

F16s could, for example, be used to push these planes further back or, at least, keep them from coming closer.

The situation as I see it is that the West simply lacks the appropriate ground based air defence systems because NATO doctrine is air power based and the current situation is something the US never envisioned so doesn't have the systems. As far as I know, the only Western SAM system that has any numbers is the Patriot and it does not manoeuvre and is too expensive to make sense and doesn't have enough numbers anyways.

NATO is a "we're going to come to you and destroy you" kind of force, not a "we're going to sit here on steppe and try to see how long we can be attacked" kind of force.

With depletion of ground based AA missiles, depletion of Migs, the F16s may simply be the only option to prevent Russia from gaining complete air supremacy over Ukraine.

Preventing this is the only thing that makes Ukraines position maintainable and at least slow to erode.

Also, keep in mind that AA doesn't need to be depleted entirely, just enough that risking planes to support large manoeuvres is justifiable.

I don't remember who it was, but don't the Russians have ~1,000 4th and 5th generation fighters lying around? Why wouldn't they be able to risk those? — Tzeentch

It was the US chief of the joint chiefs of staff that explained F16s aren't a magic solution and there is no way to defeat Russia in the air considering their 1000 comparable planes.

Obviously 10 < 1000; 10 being the billion dollar example in the General's comparison, but whatever Ukraine is going to get will be far from 1000.

As for risking Russias 1000 fighters, Russia obviously can and did and does. The question is one of cost effectiveness.

For example, the value of the land bridge to Crimea can be measured in 10s of billions to hundreds of dollars, long term one could argue trillions of dollars. 10s of billions would be the cost to substitute the canal that supplied Crimea with fresh water, and hundreds of billions would represent all the land, assets and people, and if there's really immense gas reservers, then maybe all this can be tallied up to a trillion or more. Of course, you'd then need to do a levelized net-present value calculation including the cost of the war, sanctions and so on, to get an idea of what it's really worth "right now", but clearly a lot.

Of course it could be argued that it is a net loss, but that doesn't really matter once the war starts and for the purposes of risking planes.

Even Russia's most expensive planes are worth far less than the territory gained, so it makes sense to risk them in that pursuit. Even if the war is an overall negative, you'd still need to mitigate that with conquering as much territory as feasible (taking into consideration the need for pacification and defence and so on).

However, fast forward to the current attritional phase of the war and it simply makes no sense to risk expensive planes and pilots to take a 100 meters of Bakhmut, so we didn't see planes dive bombing and strafing Ukrainian positions.

Where the calculation would change is if Ukrainian both air defence depletes enough and there is a proposed series manoeuvres that can win the war. Now, ok, maybe some aircraft will be lost, but the value of ending the war sooner rather than later is again measures in the tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars.

And from bits and pieces that have been put together about the first days of the war, Russia did mostly succeed in destroying nearly all of Ukraine air defence, hit runways etc. and gained air superiority over most of Ukraine which was essential in taking all the territory in so short a time.

However, then the West supplied large amounts of shoulder launched missiles and started to source Soviet components and systems from other ex-Soviet states to repair / rebuild Ukraine's integrated SEAD system, which then pushed Russian aircraft behind the Russian front line and not only did large offensive manoeuvres end for the Russians but they needed to retreat from large amounts of territory to consolidate their gains.

The small force Russia invaded with only made sense with air superiority as a force multiplier, so Russia needed to call up more troops and dig in over the entire front line. The extent to which they expected this may happen is another question, but this is clearly what did happen.

But what else did we see when the Russians started to dig in and consolidate ground based defences? A constant barrage of missile, drone attacks and constant sorties as close as possible to Ukraine, that have depleted Ukrainian air defence.

The situation is one in which air defence simply makes no sense in an attritional mode. The only time it would make sense to engage in attritional air defence warfare is if you're also attritting the enemies air defence, which is not what's happening.

In the current trajectory, eventually Russia will gain air supremacy.

And this is what the recent pentagon leaks basically say, that Ukraine will be soon fully depleted (by now when the document was written, but obviously Ukraine can ration missiles and be provided more, such as the Patriot to delay depletion), and if Western SAMs aren't a long term solution either, then F16s are really the only option to continue to deny Russia complete air supremacy.

This, in my view, is the mission of the F16s; nothing remotely close to supporting Ukrainian ground forces with strike missions.

Depending how they operate, they can.

AA systems may have hundreds of kilometers of range, but the radar horizon is a severely limiting factor when it comes to low-flying targets. — Tzeentch

The Ukrainians would have the same problem as the Russians did in facing man portable missile launchers, but in addition to that the Russians fighters have radar look-down capabilities that could then transmit that information to the SAMs.

Now, it maybe true the Russian fighters would need to take risks to get close enough to these F16 to track them with look-down, but the fact your enemy is also risking a plane immediately justifies risking your own plane in attritional warfare.

The risks are really high, and clearly far higher for the attacking aircraft trying to penetrate enemy SEAD systems and evade enemy fighters, than it is for the defending aircraft largely operating within their safety bubble. This is in the addition to the inherent risk of flying low under high stress.

I really don't see Ukraine flying these F16s anywhere close to Russian airspace.

Keep in mind also that Russia also has air superiority fighters, which we have not seen much of. Some say it's because they don't work, but another explanation is that it simply makes no sense for Russia to risk it's modern / modernised superiority fighters to shoot down Soviet era fighters.

To shoot down F16s is a completely different equation and you would likely see Russia taking far greater risks to shoot them down. Each F16 and pilot would not only represent a large fraction of the Ukrainian air force but it would be a huge propaganda win. If Russia lose some aircraft in the process, as the general notes they have a thousand more.

What SEAD might be able to accomplish for the Ukrainians is to provide temporary defensive cover to accomodate air strikes.

And in line with what Mearsheimer argued, I think this is likely what the Ukrainians plan to do with the F-16s. — Tzeentch

Though everything up to hear you say in your comment is true, I do not think it leads to this conclusion.

Fighters are not good at permanent air defence of a large area for the reasons you cite.

However, a small number of expensive planes can't be risked to conduct air strikes.

We'll see, but my guess is the main reason to be talking about F16 is to try to keep Ukrainian morale and have something else to talk about.

The second reason is to lob missiles as @ssu describes, just it's not so effective at shooting anything down but the idea is to stay at a safe distance and deny Russian air supremacy.

For, the Russians can't risk much their expensive planes either, so as long as Ukraine has planes with missiles that can get into the air and shoot missiles then this is a big risk to Russian fighters.

The F16s don't need to be on permanent patrol, but can scramble in the event there is Russian planes coming over the front lines to bomb stuff, which doesn't happen because Ukraine can shoot missiles at them.

Currently Russia keeps its planes behind the front line because Ukraine still has some AA systems and missiles, the F16s would, at best, keep this status quo (which isn't "good" as Russia can launch plenty of missiles and glide bombs from a safe distance, but it would be a lot worse if they could simply fly anywhere in Ukraine at will).

There is no decisive manoeuvre or single intense battle on the table that could resolve the conflict in Ukraine's favour, in which risking the planes may make sense, so at no point does it make sense to send out F16s to conduct air strikes (other than for propaganda purposes in safe locations or then because the propaganda win is worth the risk for essentially a one off).

As you note, Russia has multi layered advanced AA, SEAD, in addition to their fighters (that have look down radars, which would be where they bring unique AA capability).

The F16's are better than having no planes at all, but everything you explain just emphasises they cannot get near Russian forces and their use is severely limited.

Nope.

The vast majority of countries don't have such natural resources that Russia has. Many countries are quite vulnerable to sanctions. Starting with those countries that cannot feed their populations with their own domestic agricultural production. — ssu

You miss the point here.

The point is not that other countries can repeat what Russia has done from scratch, the point is that by completely removing Russia from the Western financial system Russia has both a need to create an alternative system as well as zero incentive (whether from fear or enticement) to cooperate in Western sanction regimes against US foes.

Russia did not opt out of the Western financial system by itself, whether because there was no desire to or perhaps there was desire but it would have been political unfeasible to just nope out of the Western economic system. Why didn't Russia do it before? Because of carrots and sticks the US can brandy about the issue: in other words Russia stayed in the Western financial system because it wanted to for the benefits as well as not wanting to risk what happens if you leave, providing the West, in particular the US, leverage in maintaining their "rules based order".

If we take the usual suspects of the sanctions world -- Iran, North Korean, Cuba, Venezuela -- they are simply not large enough countries to create some alternative economic system, and most countries and most companies would not see a cost-benefit to running foul of the US by violating US sanctions. Of course, random companies and smugglers will pop up to benefit from a little sanctions-arbitrage but such supply lines are unreliable and at a higher cost. Simply because you can get around sanctions doesn't mean it's convenient.

Someone could counter with the argument that there's China. Obviously the Chinese hub is the answer? Well, how much of that Chinese GDP comes from trade with the West? A lot. The fact is, even if Brazil, China, India and South Africa among others would favor a multipolar economy system, they do not want to exclude themselves from trading with the West. — ssu

Yes, it's exactly that the Chinese hub is the answer.

How the situation has changed with Russia essentially joining this group is that Russia is not only significantly larger (a larger population than all these countries combined) but has the resources, has the leverage, to make an equal if not greater cost-benefit proposal to their trading partners. Russia can effectively say to many countries that: you continue to trade or you're not going to eat. As you note, that's a powerful argument to displease the US in favour of Russian foreign policy.

Does China need to sell us stuff? Or do we need to by Chinese stuff?

Sanctions are presented always as some moral fact-of-the-matter "right thing to do".

But what do sanctions represent? They represent firms making less money because they can't sell their goods and services to certain markets or source the same from said markets.

It's simply not a logic that scales well in the capitalist system. It takes considerable effort to maintain sanctions on small countries, it's simply not possible to go around ordering people to stop trading with a big enough country such as Russia. At some point it's just too costly and countries tell even the "mighty US" to take a hike.

But notice the "if they do have somewhere else to go". And actually that has been Putin's Russia's biggest problem: It's economy is little and has stagnated. It hasn't been a real alternative as opting to be with Russia and excluding the West is a disastrous choice to make. Hence CIS didn't fly, also because of economic reasons. — ssu

It's not a question of countries wanting to "opt out" as some sort of ideological choice.

It's a question of leverage. If you can potentially opt out of something you can drive a harder bargain, even if you don't plan to, compared to having no alternative.

Moreover, sanctions aren't relevant concerning the countries that play nice already with US foreign policy but rather countries that don't, we're talking about countries with some sort of ideological conflict with the US.

Now, even a decade ago a pretty common response would be that history is over, all those "ideological" countries stuck in the past will go away, everything will become liberal democracy serving a platform for a homogenous global capitalist system.

Those days seem long gone and rather things are going in the opposite direction.

As for Russia's economy. As you note yourself at the start of your comment, it's about the resources.

International leverage relations follow the hierarchy of needs: people need food and primary industries (upon which everything else is based) need resources.

If major producing countries simply continue to trade with Russia (especially China and India) and the Russian government and Russian companies have no concern for Western sanctions (why would they), then all currently sanctioned countries can simply "plug into" this Russian based alternative world trading system.

Of course, there's significant overlap with the normal world trading system, but that's exactly why it destroys sanctions generally speaking.

For, whatever you may say of the Russian governance system, dealing with an established Russian firm is going to be a lot more reliable and good for business than dealing with smugglers or fly-by-night companies.

Why Ukraine Will Win: Interview with Gen. Ben Hodges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsXNJlH-4iM&ab_channel=FranklyFukuyama — RogueAI

I listened to the entirely of this interview, and it's mostly them criticising the Biden administration for not committing hard enough to Ukraine, not making "winning an objective" (I believe their exact words), and that Ukraine needs far more advanced weaponry than they have now to "win" such as a large fleet of F16s.

They also repeat a lot useless tropes like Ukrainian soldiers are just smarter than Russian soldiers and even quicker witted than American soldiers in learning new equipment, but fail to realise that even if that were true the Russians don't have to learn new equipment.

But unless I missed something, the interviewer and interviewee do not explain why Ukraine will win but explain the massive escalation in arms supplies necessary to even have a chance, accept fear of Russian nuclear weapons is the reason for the "extra caution" (in their words) but that they feel this caution is baseless and recommend not being cautious.

I'm no expert on the Russian economy, but according to Mearsheimer Russia isn't mobilizing to a war economy. — Tzeentch

Although I think technically true, the arms industry is the second largest in Russia and a significant amount of the Soviet supplies and war production infrastructure significantly limits the need for a full wartime mobilisation in order to fight a much smaller country.

The West has been predicted the Russians will run out of nearly every piece of equipment or munition since essentially the start of the war. Maybe they will run out tomorrow but it seems unlikely.

It is reported Russia is firing much less artillery shells, certainly due to sustainment concerns, but they can compensate that with glide bombs as well as building heavy fortification and mine fields. In other words, the immense artillery expenditure to suppress Ukrainian troop movements, covered building more sustainable defensive and offensive alternatives.

F-16s can't fill the role of ground-based anti-air systems, so I would probably look for a different explanation. Especially since Russia sports one of the most sophisticated AA networks in the world, and the F-16s would have to contend with that. — Tzeentch

The talk of F16's is likely simply to not-talk about the Western tanks failing to save Bakhmut or suddenly launch some grand counter offensive.

Mearsheimer speculates that the F-16s are brought in to compensate for the lack of Ukrainian artillery, since (according to Mearsheimer) the Americans have ran out of artillery they can spare. — Tzeentch

Planes can only replace artillery with air superiority, otherwise in terms of resources it makes zero sense to risk a 100 000 000 USD plane because artillery shells can't be sourced. Although I agree with a lot of Mearsheimer's points, I don't think this is good speculation.

Indeed, the West talks up F16's for weeks and then come out and manage expectations.

Commenting on the F-16 fighters, Milley cautioned that they were not going to be “the magic weapon”.

“There are no magic weapons” – not the F-16s or other weapons, he said, noting that 10 F-16s could cost $2bn, including maintenance.

“The Russians have a thousand fourth and fifth-generation fighters, so if you’re going to contest Russia in the air, you’re going to need a substantial amount of fourth and fifth-generation fighters,” he said. — Aljazeera

Not that some F16s would be useless, they can fire various standoff munitions from a safe distance, but that would simply be replacing some lost capacity and not really changing anything.

I was unaware the "nuclear option" was coined by people trying to make it sound negative and something best to avoid. First time I heard it was listening to neo-cons gleefully recommending the "nuclear option" if Russia invaded Ukraine. Definitely adds some additional irony to it.

I don't think the war in Ukraine really erodes the position of the US. The fact is that the World cannot just go out with Russian oil and raw materials, and that's the main reason many countries aren't so keen to jump in the US bandwagon: the US won't guarantee them the resources. — ssu

I'm not sure you're agreeing or disagreeing.

It's precisely because of the Russian resources that sanctions haven't worked to isolate Russia. Now, if you want to argue US wasn't omnipotent before and aren't omnipotent now, that's obviously true, no argument. What changes, however, is leverage and negotiating positions.

Prior to the sanctions there was no alternative world financial system and even if countries could survive sanctions (Cuba, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Syria) it wasn't like they were doing "great" economically. Sanctions on small countries were an incredibly high cost to disagree with US foreign policy.

So, the US could leverage that in negotiations with other countries. Simply because something is survivable does not mean it isn't something to fear. Maybe not everyone wants to be like North Korea or Iran.

And this included negotiations with Russia. First, it was not a foregone conclusion that Russia was indeed big enough to simply build an alternative "low friction" trading regime with its various partners, in particular China and India (certainly if it was a foregone conclusion the West would have hesitated more). At minimum the prospect represents significant risks. Second, it was obviously not a Russian foreign policy objective to completely cut economic ties with the West ... or they wouldn't have kept building pipelines to said West.

And it is not a case that "oh well, Russia survived sanctions, you win some you lose some" because in cutting off Russia from the Western financial system they have zero incentive to maintain any trade frictions with the other bad boys at the back of the class, and so Russia surviving sanctions basically means everyone can now survive sanctions.

As noted in the analysis I cited, US sanctions (at the time) were far more effective than EU sanctions (a similar sized economy offering broadly comparable technologies) because the US runs the global financial system as a monopoly (at the time). You can only punish trade partners, whether buyers or suppliers, if they have no where else to go. If they do have somewhere else to go ... then they just say "fuck you, I'll go deal with these other people".

This is a profound geopolitical change.

Yes, the US was never and is not now omnipotent, but breaking with the "rules based system" (i.e. US global financial hegemony) was always hypothetically possible, but represented (since WWII) an immense "first mover" cost that prevented enough countries getting together to form an alternative financial block.

The US empire is not one of military conquest but primarily financial. Where both military force and sanctions plays a role in maintaining US empire is in punishing countries that get out of line, but notice that those countries are simply ruined, they are not conquered and re-integrated into the US economic system (a. la. every previous Empire).

Faced with these immense harms, the US can offer many (certainly in the short term, for the ruling elite, as well as long term in some cases) as benefits to not get out of line and do what you're told.

It's a carrot and stick approach.

What has eroded and will erode the US is position is the absolutely disastrous failure in Afghanistan and the equally catastrophic "War on Terror". Yeah, Americans might have forgotten the WoT, but the countries in the Middle East (and North Africa) have not — ssu

This is also true, and certainly the term eroded is better applied to the Afghanistan mission and in this new war a better term would be "abruptly change".

However, why 20 years in Afghanistan didn't really change anything is that an Empire fighting an insurgency somewhere is pretty normal. The US did not invest significant amounts of complex weapons systems and massive amounts of ammunition in Afghanistan as has been required in Ukraine. All throughout Afghanistan no one doubted the US would and could bomb others, which they did in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere for example.

And of course Afghanistan had zero impact on the global financial system.

Now, if you're thinking only that the US "close friends" won't go anywhere else, that the "NATO won't fall apart" etc. I agree with those positions. What is at stake in this world is the international relations outside "the West".

Relations that, on one level, don't really impact anyone in the West, mostly what's at stake in these countries is if some corporation is going to make slightly more money than they otherwise would. So, from this perspective one could have a "so what" attitude of what happens to US influence in far away places.

However, where things do affect things for actual Westerners is the fate of the USD. No one really knows what will happen to the USD if there emerges a global financial competitor.

It's nice to see that you see point of view.

I'm far less optimistic all these geopolitical changes won't end in disaster, but I agree with summary of what is actually happening.

I'm not sure he's arguing NATO will fall apart, such as Hungary or anyone leaving, just pointing out the fact Hungary's position right now is at odds with the US.

As you aptly observe:

NATO countries don't follow slavishly the US in every US incursion, but the countries not going along in certain policies doesn't undermine the defense pact itself. — ssu

Which, with failure in Ukraine, it this opting-out of US wars or US sanctions that would be likely to increase.

The defensive aspect of NATO is one thing, which I don't see anyone arguing Russia or China would actually attack NATO anyways.

What is at stake in this war in Ukraine is the imperialistic aspect of NATO, serving US interests. If countries weren't really forced to participate before it doesn't necessarily take much for them to start opting out in larger numbers.

If the US's geopolitical position is significantly eroded by this war then both costs and risks of participating in US intervention increase while benefits decrease.

Worse, as long as the war is "on" (not to mention the tensions in the South China Sea) the US cannot credibly say they will cause much trouble for other countries that get out of line. There is a window in which countries can radically shift geopolitical positions without much fear of being bombed by the US.

But worst of all, the sanctions have not only failed but created a parallel global economy absorbing everyone already under sanction (in particular Iran), but which any country (mostly in Asia but elsewhere too) can leverage in international relations both directly vis-a-vis the US (they "can go elsewhere") as well as in increasing collaboration with foes of the US (aka. China and Russia) knowing US retaliation is significantly blunted.

And this is not in anyway a new idea, but basically sanctions 101:

In a time when U.S. consistency and reliability is openly questioned by some of America’s closest allies, threats of permanent sanctions will draw more attention to the risks of being dependent on the U.S. financial system. America’s importance as an international financial hub will not disappear overnight, and neither will the reach of U.S. sanctions. If the U.S. comes to be seen as an untrustworthy custodian, there will be a slow and inexorable erosion of America’s role and influence.

Sanctions compare favorably with any other tool the U.S. has—and certainly very favorably to military action. Sanctions can help address real problems in the world, which is why the U.S. should not fritter them away. — Misusing U.S. Sanctions Will Sap Their Power, Blanc, 2017

Or even more prophetic:

A one-size-fits-all approach to foreign policy is bound to fail. But the trend is no less clear. While there will be those instances in which sanctions can help, either alone or more likely in conjunction with other tools, recent history strongly suggests that the potential of sanctions to contribute to American foreign policy will be modest—and that asking more of them than that promises to be counterproductive. — Economic Sanctions: Too Much of a Bad Thing, Haas, 1998

Yet not more than 18 months ago, US talking heads would regularly refer to sanctions as "the nuclear option" ... anyone calling them that now?

Likewise, anyone actually believe today that the US may bomb or invade them any moment if they crossed any US foreign policy lines?

Of course, it's possible the large majority of the world stays square in the US sphere of influence because they are so likeable, but if they don't then it definitely seems to me the US has invested their main imperial tools in Ukraine.

And for what? To (maybe) damage Russia enough so that Russia can't bully around neighbouring countries?

Ukraine is the tree in the US' imperial forest, and the way things are going they aren't even happy in their new tree house.